Norwich Union, the UK's largest insurer, is looking to return around £40 million of "unclaimed assets" to 40,000 customers. The money is held in life and pension policies dating as far back as the 1950's, with many held by other companies which were subsequently merged into Norwich Union and its subsidiaries.
Norwich Union, the UK's largest insurer, is looking to return around £40 million of "unclaimed assets" to 40,000 customers. The money is held in life and pension policies dating as far back as the 1950's, with many held by other companies which were subsequently merged into Norwich Union and its subsidiaries1.
The initiative builds upon the success of the "Find the fisherman" campaign earlier this year, where Norwich Union successfully traced around 4,000 fishermen, returning almost £2.5m. The techniques successfully used in the Fisherman campaign will be applied to this wider project across all of the company's unclaimed assets.
Commenting on the initiative, Mark Hodges, chief executive at Norwich Union, said: "This is our customers' money and we are quite simply asking them to come collect what is theirs.
"We had a great success earlier in the year finding many fishermen who were entitled to claim a pension, eventually returning almost £2.5m. We learned a great deal from this and we are able to use the knowledge we gained to create the robust processes we are employing now.
"Unclaimed assets are common across the whole industry. Yes, it's very surprising that people should lose track of so much money, but we strongly believe that all companies should be taking steps to get this money back to its rightful owners."
The initiative launches 5 November 2007. Customers can begin to trace a policy by completing a form available from either 0800 1582465 or www.norwichunion.com/existing-customer/trace-policies/.
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Press office contacts:
Robert Pell 01904 452659 Out of hours 07800 666563
Louise Soulsby 01904 452617 Out of hours 07800 699526
Notes to editors:
1 A number of insurance companies make up Norwich Union Life. Highlighted below are the key companies.
| CGU | Formed by the merger of General Accident and Commercial Union in February 1998. Merged with Norwich Union in May 2000. |
| Commercial Union (CU) | Merged with General Accident in February 1998. |
| General Accident (GA) | Merged with Commercial Union in February 1998. |
| Hibernian | Acquired by CGU in Nov 1999. |
| London & Edinburgh Insurance Group Limited | Acquired by Norwich Union in Nov 1998. |
| North British & Mercantile Insurance Company | Merged with Commercial Union in 1959. |
| Provident Mutual | Acquired by General Accident in 1996. |
| Scottish Union | Acquired by Norwich Union in 1959. |
| The Yorkshire Insurance Company | Acquired by General Accident in 1967. |
About Norwich Union
Norwich Union is the UK's largest insurer. It is a leading provider of life, pensions and investment products and one of the largest financial adviser (FA) providers. FAs provide over 70% of the company's long-term savings business in the UK.
Norwich Union's news releases and a selection of images are available from Aviva's internet press centre at www.aviva.com/media.