My Sleeping Money Possibly Worth '2 Trillion Won', Easy Ways to Find It

Allows Dormant Deposit Inquiry and Payment Application

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kangwook Cho] The total amount of dormant deposits contributed to the Korea Inclusive Finance Agency (KIFA) has reached a staggering 2 trillion won. Dormant deposits refer to money that has been left untouched, such as deposits, checks, and insurance payments for which the claim period has expired.

Financial authorities and institutions are jointly conducting a campaign to help consumers more easily locate their hidden financial assets. However, despite these efforts, the amount of dormant financial assets left untouched by customers in domestic financial institutions has not significantly decreased.

So, what are some easy ways to find money that might be sleeping without your knowledge?

According to the financial sector on the 14th, the Financial Services Commission recently decided to allow verification of dormant deposits contributed to KIFA through Account Info after identity confirmation.

Account Info is a one-stop service that allows users to check all their accounts scattered across the entire financial sector?including banks, savings banks, mutual finance, securities firms, and insurance?and close long-unused small-balance accounts to recover the balance.

Until now, Account Info could not check dormant deposits contributed to KIFA, so users had to verify them separately, which was inconvenient.

With this service improvement, users can apply for payment of dormant deposits under 10 million won to their own accounts. Once the payment application is made, the deposit can be received in the account within 10 minutes.

If the amount exceeds 10 million won, payment applications can be made at the financial institution branch that contributed the dormant deposit or at any Korea Inclusive Finance Integrated Support Center nationwide.

Deposits in financial institutions become dormant if there has been no transaction or payment claim for 5 to 10 years, cashier’s checks for 5 years, insurance payments for 3 years, and unclaimed dividends for over 10 years. Dormant deposits are contributed to KIFA under the "Act on Support for Financial Life of Low-income People."

The payment amount of dormant deposits by KIFA has surged annually: 35.6 billion won in 2017, 129.3 billion won in 2018, 155.3 billion won in 2019, and 150.1 billion won as of the end of October 2020.

The financial authorities plan to improve the service by the end of the year to allow payment applications through "Government24," where dormant deposits contributed to KIFA can also be checked.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.