Millions unclaimed in 'lost' savings accounts Everybody's budget is under pressure at the moment and yet millions of us are turning our backs on money that is rightfully ours. It would certainly be better in your pocket or current bank account, so here are a few ideas to get your hunt for some of the forgotten money under way. Unclaimed Premium Bond prizes range all the way up to £100,000 from £25. If you think you may have missed the boat by leaving a prize unclaimed for too long, there is good news. There is no time limit for claiming these forgotten prizes. National Savings & Investments (NS&I) said the most common reason for winners failing to claim prizes was forgetting to pass on their new address when they move home. More than a third of people who have lost touch with their savings have moved and failed to tell all their financial providers their new address, according to a survey for NS&I. Half of the people questioned said they found it difficult to remember all of the accounts they had opened over the years. Others who had failed to claim their winnings had forgotten about bonds that they had been given as children, while prizes could also go unclaimed if the winners had died and their executors were unaware that they owned any bonds. If you want to check whether you have won any of the unclaimed prizes, you can check by visiting NS&I's website (nsandi.com) and entering your Premium Bond holder's number into the prize-checker search facility on the home page. Alternatively, you can write to the following address: Premium Bonds, National Savings & Investments, Glasgow, G58 1WA. If you don't know your holder's number, it is still possible to find out if you are due any unclaimed winnings, although the process is more complicated. The website mylostaccount.org.uk helps you trace forgotten money that may be lying dormant in accounts at banks, building societies and at NS&I. The service covers accounts at organisations that no longer exist in their original form, such as merged banks or demutualised building societies. Some foreign banks that operate in Britain also take part in the scheme. The website will ask you a number of questions, such as the name of the institutions where you think you may have held accounts, the account type, the branch you used and your address at the time. If a bank, building society or NS&I thinks they have found an account that you are looking for, they will need you to provide documents, such as a passport, driving licence or birth certificate, to show that the account is rightfully yours. Most dormant accounts have only small sums in them - generally £50 or less. However there are some with tens of thousands of pounds just waiting for the rightful owner to show up. Banks alone have between £250 and £350 million sitting in their coffers waiting to be collected. This includes money left in accounts with around 500 banks over the past 100 or so years. There are about 40 current banks taking part in the current exercise but through these it should be possible to track any account opened at any British bank going back at least as far as 1900. All building societies have signed up to the mylostaccount.org.uk service. That means you should be able to trace money left in any of the 1,500 building societies that have been around in the past 100 or so years but have since been taken over or merged into others. In total between £130 million and £150 million is currently lying in dormant accounts with building societies. There are hundreds of millions of pounds of unclaimed money in dormant NS&I accounts but if you add in other NS&I products - including unclaimed premium bond prizes - the figure rises to about £1 billion. This includes around £200 million in the Ordinary Account which was launched in 1861 but closed in 2004. It seems like a lot of money but more than four out of five of these accounts has less than £1 with an average balance of just 19p. In fact just 1 in 100 has more than £50 in it. Some £400 million of unclaimed money is in fixed interest savings certificates with a further £80 million in index linked savings certificates. Another £260 million of the forgotten money is tied up in the investment account. You can start a trace for money tied up in NS&I products via www.nsandi.com/help/tracing_service or through the mylostaccount website. Previous research by specialists Mintel suggested that there was at least £12 billion of shares from privatised companies that had never been claimed. That means the dividends on these shares have also been left unpaid. Registrars admit that the old system of share certificates - rather than holding shares through nominees - did mean that shareholders simply "disappeared," usually because they moved and never supplied forwarding addresses. Annabel Brodie-Smith of the Association of Investment Companies noted: "We are always willing to help people track down lost or forgotten investment trust investments if they write to us at: AIC, 24 Chiswell Street, London EC1Y 4YY." Otherwise the unclaimed assets register may be able to help at www.uar.co.uk/benefit.htm but they do charge £25. Giant insurance companies admit that they have life policies which have never been claimed on and pensions savings which have never been paid out. Earlier research from Mintel suggested there could be over £300 million of pension money unclaimed and another £100 million due to be pair out on life policies. You can use the unclaimed assets register - www.uar.co.uk/benefit.htm - to help track down if there is money to which you are entitled but there is a £25 charge. Spokesman James Jones said there was no up-to-date figure for the amount involved. He explained: "We have around 5.5 million records registered against which any potential claim can be checked. Although we have no idea of the overall value involved, it would appear that around 43pc are linked to life policies, 6pc to occupational pension schemes and 3pc to personal pensions. One place to start your search is at the Pension Tracing Service. Call 0845 6002 537, visit www.direct.gov.uk or write to Pension Tracing Service, Tyneview Park, Whitley Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE98 1BA Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions suggest that tens of billions of pounds in means tested benefits go unclaimed every year. The biggest slice is unclaimed pensions credit but there is also a huge amount of unclaimed council tax and housing benefit. Money due to jobseekers and to help people on low incomes was also left unclaimed. A spokesman for Citizens Advice said: "We calculate that three out of four people entitled to working tax credit fail to claim it and some three million miss out on council tax benefits to which they are entitled." Help is available at the local Citizens Advice Bureaux, online at our site www.adviceguide.org.uk or there is an online calculator on HM Revenue and Customs' website at www.hmrc.gov.uk. Millions of people sit glued to the television every Saturday night hoping to become the next Lottery millionaires. Surprisingly, not all winners collect their prizes according to Camelot, the organiser. Spokesman Simon Horne said: "Any prizes that are not claimed within 180 days are added to the money we give to good causes."