The Federal Government has used the Budget to formally reverse the former Labor Government’s approach to unclaimed banking and life insurance deposits.
The move will see the trigger point for unclaimed bank and life insurance monies being transferred to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) increased from the current three years to the previous trigger point of seven years.
The move will have a significant impact on revenue collections forecast for ASIC.
In announcing the move, the Government said it was protecting the savings of Australians and was intent on restoring the pre-2012 regime
It said children’s bank accounts would also be exempt to ensure funds put aside in these accounts will never be transferred to the Government.
The Budget said the Government would also make changes to protect the privacy of individuals that did have genuinely inactive accounts transferred to ASIC to address concerns around identity theft and to stop unscrupulous people preying on vulnerable Australians.
“Requirements for ASIC to publish the Unclaimed Money Gazette will be removed and restrictions introduced to generally limit FOI requests to an individual’s own details,” the announcement said.
It said the changes would take effect from 31 December 2015 with a negative cash impact of $285.1 million and a fiscal balance impact of $158.0 million over four years from 2015/16.
