Bank account holders beware: If it’s been three years since your last transaction, one local bank is warning that your money will soon be turned over to the state.
Rockville Bank, one of the largest community lenders in Connecticut, has taken out an advertisement in local newspapers warning that money in accounts that have been inactive since 2007 will be considered abandoned and turned over to the state treasurer’s office.
It’s a long-time requirement under the state’s escheat law, which requires intangible property to be sent to the state once it is presumed abandoned.
In Connecticut that property includes money, money orders, checks, deposits, interests, stock dividends, bonds, and insurance proceeds.
Bill McGurk, the president and CEO of Rockville Bank, said banks are required to notify customers about abandoned accounts, but few if any financial institutions in Connecticut take out an advertisement in the newspaper to do it.
“We want to find them and get their own money into their hands,” McGurk said.
Banks and financial institutions must turn over three main types of properties under the state’s escheat law. For example, they are required to turn over savings deposits after three years of inactivity.
Additionally, financial institutions must turn over safe deposit boxes or other safe depositories after five years of nonpayment of rent.
Finally, after five years of inactivity, lenders must turn over individual retirement accounts or self-employed retirement plans, starting six months after the date on which federal tax rules require distribution of funds to the beneficiary to begin.
The treasurer’s office places most of the property it receives into a trust account where owners or their heirs may claim it.
In October 2009, there were more than 887,000 names of people that may be entitled to as much as $401 million in unclaimed property, according to the treasurer’s office. State law requires the treasurer to publish in newspapers, every other year, new names that have been added to its database.
In fiscal year 2009, the treasurer’s office said it returned a record $32.3 million to nearly 15,000 claimants.
McGurk said the bank has been doing the annual advertisement for quite awhile, and this year’s version lists the names of more than 50 customers whose accounts have been dormant for the last three years.
Before the bank publishes the names, McGurk said company employees get involved in a search for local customers who are on the list. Originally, McGurk said they had a few hundred names of dormant account holders, but were able to whittle it down to 50 or so, after finding customers either in person or by mail.
At one point, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. regulators raised questions about the advertisement, McGurk said, saying it could violate consumers’ privacy rights.
McGurk said he was forced to go to the FDIC’s New England office in Boston and convince them that sharing the information was actually appreciated by consumers, who have the choice to opt out of having their name published should their account ever become dormant.
“No one has opted out of it,” McGurk said. “We’ve gotten great customer reaction from running this advertisement. I think they appreciate the extra effort we make to try to get the money back to its proper owner.”
SI Financial Group shrinking board
The Willimantic-based parent of The Savings Institute Bank & Trust Co. is shrinking the size of its board of directors.
SI Financial Group Inc. announced that it will decrease the size of its board of directors from eight to seven members, in order to eliminate the vacancy created by the resignation last July 3 of Steven H. Townsend.
Wells Fargo names new branch manager
Wells Fargo Advisors has tapped Taryn Mondi to lead the firm’s Metro-North Market branch in Hamden. In her new role as branch manager, Mondi will oversee branch operations and management.
Mondi, who has more than 10 years of financial services experience, most recently served as associate manager of the firm.
Mondi’s branch has 17 financial advisors and is located at 9 Washington Ave.
Greg Bordonaro is a Hartford Business Journal staff writer.
