DORMANT FUNDS: Treasury proposes central administrator for R88.6bn in unclaimed assets

South Africa has more than R80-billion sitting in unclaimed financial assets across banking and non-banking sectors. The government’s new proposed solution is the creation of a central administrator responsible for managing all unclaimed benefits, but with a time limit on how long money can be claimed.

Well, if you are the National Treasury you create a central administrator to manage the nearly R90-billion in unclaimed assets in the country. This is the suggestion contained in a discussion paper put out for public comment on 20 August 2026.

According to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) this figure stood at about R88.6-billion in 2022. This is essentially money that nobody has come to collect, sitting in dormant bank accounts, unclaimed retirement benefits and unpaid investment dividends and insurance proceeds.

Under South Africa’s Pension Funds Act for retirement funds, an “unclaimed benefit” is any lump sum, pension or retirement money due to a fund member or their beneficiaries that has not been paid for 24 months from the date it became payable, and during which period the fund must trace beneficiaries. Further than this, there are no consistent definitions for other unclaimed asset classes.

To deal with this, the Treasury is proposing the establishment of a central administrator, which it said in a media statement would be responsible for “record-keeping and tracing of asset owners and beneficiaries”.

The Treasury wants to change how unclaimed financial assets are managed by pulling funds from the financial institutions holding them into a centralised system.

Under this model, an appointed central administrator would take over the data, tracing and claims process, while the assets are invested with the Corporation for Public Deposits (CPD), a subsidiary of the South African Reserve Bank whose main function is to accept and invest deposits from the public sector. If someone makes a claim while their assets are with the CPD, they will be entitled to the net balance of their account.

The Treasury’s paper outlines that currently, each financial institution handles its own unclaimed accounts using its own tracing methods. Centralisation of this process is intended to support consistent standards and clearer accountability.

In its discussion paper, the Treasury is also proposing a time limit after which an unclaimed financial asset can no longer be claimed. Two options are on the table: an age-based cut-off of 110 years, in which case the claim dies once the original owner would have turned 110, as well as a fixed period of 45 years when an asset would cease to be claimable 45 years after it first becomes unclaimed.

According to the discussion paper, the 45-year period would achieve greater administrative efficiency.