The inflow of unclaimed funds in state treasuries continues to come in thick and fast and the according to the last estimate almost $40 billion was piled up in various state treasuries across the nation. This roughly translates to almost 30 million Americans missing out on some unclaimed funds or property. With every passing month, billions of unclaimed funds are being added to the state treasuries and states like New York and California have this added burden of managing this growing pile of unclaimed funds.

Even the smaller states are now reporting the heavy influx of unclaimed funds. Some of the most common sources of unclaimed funds in the state treasuries are: abandoned bank accounts, unclaimed savings and checking accounts, child support payments, uncashed dividends, stocks, customer deposits or over payments, certificates of deposit, credit balances, refunds, matured life insurance policies, uncashed death benefit checks, and the contents of safety deposit boxes.

State treasuries, which can be considered the richest in terms of unclaimed funds in the U.S. are New York with $10.5 billion, California with almost $6 billion, and Texas with $2 billion. According to a new report, the problem of unclaimed funds is not only limited to the federal and the state governments. It has been disclosed that the burden of unclaimed funds is also weighing heavier on the Local government.

Local governments have reported to have piled almost $23 billion of unclaimed funds; out of which only $1 billion was claimed back by the actual owners. The U.S. federal government holds even more, including $17 billion in unredeemed savings bonds and hundreds of billions of unclaimed dollars in IRS refunds, retirement and Social Security checks that went undelivered or weren’t cashed.

In a concerted drive to whittle down the growing pile of unclaimed funds, nearly all of the state treasuries and federal agencies have created outreach programs and community awareness events which not only educate the residents about their possible missing funds, but also offer an avenue for filing a claim on-the-spot. State treasuries have launched informative websites for unclaimed fund seekers. These websites not only provide the most current information regarding unclaimed funds policies, but also lets the claimants fill up online claim forms.

The pile of unclaimed money holed up with the government and state treasuries is growing at a rapid pace. Unclaimed money pile is major source of concern for state treasuries as well as federal agencies. The growth of unclaimed funds across all the state treasuries has been exponential to say the least.

While the larger states were already grappling with the onslaught of unclaimed funds, even the smaller states and financial organizations like banks and insurance companies are also reporting large volumes of abandoned and unclaimed funds. Larger states, like New York and California, are facing the challenge of locating the owners of huge unclaimed money chunks; $10 billion and $6 billion respectively. A recent Press Release is about half a million dollars in unclaimed money from former Washington Mutual Bank customers in Wisconsin is waiting to be claimed.

NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators) has recently revealed that the combined values of unclaimed funds holed up with states and federal government has already touched the $40 billion mark. It is estimated that almost 8 out of 9 American families have somebody who have lost some money at some point of time, and this money is still to be claimed.

Unable to tackle the problem of unclaimed funds growth, most of the larger states have already embraced a combination of online, print media and electronic media awareness program to reach out to as many people as possible. These programs are meant to spread the awareness about the unclaimed funds and also the process of claim.

The outreach program of the state along with the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), a nonprofit organization affiliated with the National Association of State Treasurers, has managed to spread widespread awareness about the state government’s unclaimed funds initiative. Most of the state treasuries and federal authorities are trying their best to tackle the increasing volume of unclaimed money through unclosed bank accounts, returned tax refund, unremitted pension funds, and other types of personal assets. In spite of all the best efforts of all these agencies and governments, the pile of unclaimed funds continues grow larger with every passing quarter.