There is a real pile of money here, and it is bigger than most people expect. If you have ever closed a job, moved cities, cleared out a parent's paperwork, or opened a savings account for a purpose that never happened, there is a genuine chance your name is in a federal registry right now with a dollar figure beside it.
There is also a lot of wrong information about it, including on this page's own earlier version. The registry moved. The claim process is not what it was. And the single most repeated claim in Canadian coverage of this topic, that the Bank of Canada holds the money forever, is simply not true.
So we went to the source. Everything below comes from the Bank of Canada's own Unclaimed Properties Office or from the text of the Bank Act and the Bank of Canada Act as published by the Department of Justice. Section numbers are included so you can check any line yourself.
The short answer
When a deposit at a federally regulated bank or trust company sits with no activity for 10 years, the institution is required by law to hand the balance to the Bank of Canada. The Bank's Unclaimed Properties Office then holds it and lists it in a public, free, searchable registry at unclaimedproperties.bankofcanada.ca. You search by last name or account number, you claim online, and there is no fee to search or to claim.
Two things that are not widely known. First, nobody tells you after the transfer happens, so the money can sit there for decades without you ever hearing about it. Second, it is not held forever: balances under $1,000 are held for 30 years and balances of $1,000 or more for 100 years, after which the money goes to the Receiver General for Canada and stops being yours to claim.
The numbers, as the Bank of Canada publishes them
The Unclaimed Properties Office publishes four figures on its own site. These are the ones read on 4 August 2026, stated as at 31 December 2025.
Those four numbers say more together than apart, and the arithmetic is worth doing out loud because nobody else seems to.
- The average balance is small. $1.60 billion spread across 3.6 million balances is roughly $444 each. Most of what is sitting there is a few hundred dollars, not a fortune.
- The average claim paid is not small. $20.0 million paid across 1,937 claims is roughly $10,300 per claim. The claims that get made and paid are overwhelmingly the large ones, which almost certainly means estates and businesses rather than individuals stumbling onto an old chequing account.
- Almost nobody claims. 1,937 claims paid against 3.6 million balances is about 0.05 per cent of the pile in a year, and $20.0 million against $1.60 billion is about 1.25 per cent of the value. The registry is public and free, and it is still barely used.
The arithmetic in those three bullets is ours, done from the Bank of Canada's two published pairs of figures. The four headline numbers are the Bank's. We have not seen the underlying distribution, so treat the averages as averages and nothing more.
How a bank account turns into an unclaimed balance
This is not a bank policy. It is a statutory obligation, and the wording matters because it explains why accounts you thought were safe get swept.
Section 438(1) of the Bank Act says that where a deposit has been made in Canada that is payable in Canada, and no transaction has taken place and no statement of account has been requested or acknowledged by the customer during a period of 10 years, the bank shall pay to the Bank of Canada, not later than 31 December in each year, an amount equal to the principal of the deposit plus any interest calculated under its terms. The same section adds that the payment discharges the bank from all liability in respect of the deposit.
Read that clock carefully. It is not 10 years since you last thought about the account. It runs from the later of the last transaction and the last time you requested or acknowledged a statement. For a term deposit it runs from the day the fixed term ended. Interest posting by the bank itself does not restart it, because it is not a transaction by you.
Section 438(1) also catches paper. A cheque, draft or bill of exchange payable in Canada that a bank issued, certified or accepted, and that has gone unpaid for 10 years after issue, certification, acceptance or maturity, whichever is later, goes to the Bank of Canada the same way. The only carve out named in the provision is an instrument issued in payment of a dividend on the capital of a bank.
The three warnings the bank is required to send
Section 439 requires notice, and it is more generous than most people realise. The bank must send a notice stating that the deposit or instrument remains unpaid, by mail and by electronic means, to your recorded address and electronic address so far as they are known to the bank. Under section 439(2) the notice goes out during the month of January following the end of the first two year period, again after the first five year period, and again after the first nine year period. Section 439(3)(b) adds that the nine year notice must include the mailing address and websites where you can get information on how to claim.
Which means the system only fails in one specific way: the bank writes to an address you left years ago. That is the entire mechanism behind most of the 3.6 million balances.
What the Unclaimed Properties Office holds, and what it does not
This table is the single most useful thing on the page, because a large share of people who search come away thinking there is no record when in fact the record was never going to be there.
| Held by the Unclaimed Properties Office | Not held by it |
|---|---|
|
Chequing accounts Savings accounts Deposits Positive credit card balances Term deposits Guaranteed Investment Certificates Deposit receipts Bank drafts Certified cheques Money orders Official cheques Travellers cheques |
RRSP and RRIF accounts, apart from The Canada RSP and Canada RIF plans TFSA accounts Life insurance policies Credit union and caisse populaire balances that are not federally regulated Balances at utilities and other companies Gold or silver certificates Safety deposit boxes Stocks and dividends, which go to the province's securities commission Land and livestock Gift certificates |
Two of those exclusions matter more than the rest. Your credit union is probably not in here. The Bank of Canada Act defines the institutions that must transfer as banks, authorized foreign banks, companies under the Trust and Loan Companies Act and associations under the Cooperative Credit Associations Act. A provincially regulated credit union or caisse populaire is none of those, so a forgotten balance there follows provincial rules instead. And your TFSA is not in here, nor is an ordinary RRSP, which surprises people who assume registered money is covered by the same sweep.
How to search, in about two minutes
The registry lives at unclaimedproperties.bankofcanada.ca. The older address, bankofcanada.ca/unclaimed-balances, now redirects, which is why several Canadian articles send readers to a page that no longer exists.
Step 1: Search on last name alone first
Type your last name, or a business name, or an account number if you happen to have one. The Bank's own instructions are explicit that results only appear when they match every field you fill in, so adding a first name, a city or a province narrows rather than helps. Start wide and only refine if the list is long.
Step 2: Search the names you are connected to, not just your own
Search former surnames, including a maiden name. Search the exact spelling an immigrant relative used on their first Canadian account. Search a parent or grandparent if you are an executor or heir. Search a business you once had a signing authority for. The registry is a name index, so anything the bank recorded slightly differently sits in a different place.
Step 3: Select what you believe is yours and start the claim
Where you find a property you are entitled to, you select it and continue. You can select more than one before submitting. Submitting a search costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
How the claim actually works
Here is where the older Canadian coverage, including this page's own previous version, went wrong. The usual instruction is to take a reference number back to the original bank and have the bank retrieve the money for you. That is not the current process. You claim directly from the Bank of Canada's Unclaimed Properties Office. The bank that transferred the balance was discharged from all liability for it under section 438(1) at the moment it paid the money over.
1. Submit the claim request online, then watch your inbox
The Bank states that after you submit an online claim request you will receive an email within approximately one hour with a claim form attached, and that the list of required documentation is set out on that form. It also tells you to check your spam folder, which is worth doing.
2. Prove who you are: two pieces of identification
Every claimant must provide two pieces of identification. At least one must carry a photo, and at least one must display your current address. The Bank will accept a piece of mail issued by a federal, provincial, territorial or municipal entity for the address piece. Everything must be in English or French. Foreign documents need a certified translator and notarization to prove authenticity.
3. Prove the money is yours: entitlement documents
What counts depends on what the property is. For an account, the Bank lists a passbook, a bank statement, a void cheque or a letter from the bank, each showing the account number of the original dormant account. For a deposit, an investment statement, a GIC certificate, a term deposit document or a deposit receipt showing the deposit account number, or a credit card statement showing the account number. For an instrument such as a bank draft, the original instrument or a copy showing the instrument number if you were the purchaser, or the original instrument if you were the payee.
4. Send the documents the right way
Documentation is uploaded through the Bank's secure online portal. There is one hard exception: if the value of your claim exceeds $5,000 you must mail your documentation to the Bank of Canada, Unclaimed Properties Office, 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9.
Realistic expectation setting: if you no longer have a passbook, a statement or a cheque from an account you last touched more than a decade ago, the entitlement half of this is the hard part, not the identification half. Start looking through old tax files, safety deposit contents and estate paperwork before you conclude the money is unreachable. The Bank says other documents may also be accepted, and that it will email you if it needs more.
Fees and interest, stated plainly
- There is no fee to search. The Bank of Canada says so directly: there is no fee associated with searching for and initiating a property claim.
- There is no fee to process a claim. The Unclaimed Properties Office does not charge one.
- You may still have costs. The Bank flags the cost of proving entitlement, such as having claim documents notarized.
- Interest is limited. Interest is paid for the first 10 years of custody, and only on balances that arrived as an interest bearing savings account. All other deposits and instruments earn nothing. Section 438(3) of the Bank Act is the underlying rule: the Bank of Canada is liable for the amount plus interest where interest was payable under the terms of the deposit, for a period not exceeding ten years from the day it received the payment, at a rate the Minister determines.
Put those last two together and the honest conclusion is uncomfortable. A forgotten chequing balance transferred in 1999 has earned nothing for a quarter of a century and has lost most of its purchasing power. Finding it is still worth doing. Expecting it to have grown is not.
The retention clock: this money is not held forever
This is the correction that matters most, because the "held indefinitely" line appears everywhere, including in the previous version of this page.
The Bank of Canada states its retention periods directly:
- Unclaimed bank balances of less than $1,000 are held for 30 years.
- Balances of $1,000 or more are held for 100 years.
- Anything still unclaimed at the end of the retention period is transferred to the Receiver General for Canada.
The statute behind that is section 22 of the Bank of Canada Act, and it is worth reading because it counts differently. Section 22(1) says the Bank is not liable for an unpaid debt transferred to it where the amount paid was less than $1,000 and at least 40 years have gone by since the later of the last transaction on the books of the institution and the last statement of account requested or acknowledged. Since the balance only reached the Bank after 10 years of inactivity, that 40 year statutory clock is where the widely quoted 30 year custody period comes from.
Section 22(1.3) handles the larger balances differently again: the Bank is not liable where the amount was $1,000 or more and at least 100 years have gone by since the payment was made to the Bank. So the short clock runs from your last activity at the bank, and the long clock runs from the transfer. Section 22(3) then requires the Bank to pay the money to the Receiver General within two months after the end of the calendar year in which the applicable period expired, without interest, and permits it to destroy all records relating to it. Section 22(4) puts that money into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Claiming on behalf of someone who has died
Estates are where the large claims live, which the average paid claim of roughly $10,300 strongly implies. The Bank defines who may submit a claim:
- A living account owner, or their authorized representative such as a power of attorney, or a public guardian and trustee.
- An heir or beneficiary of an estate with no will.
- An executor, administrator or liquidator of an estate with a will.
- A signing officer of a business or corporation.
If a lawyer or other third party files for you, the Bank requires a signed third party authorization form at the time of submission, and states that third party claims without authorization on file are closed automatically. You are never obliged to use one.
Practical note for executors: search the registry before you distribute an estate, not after. A deposit that was swept 15 years before the death will not appear on any recent statement, and the deceased almost certainly never saw the notices either.
Where else unclaimed money hides in Canada
The federal registry is one of several, and it says so. The Bank of Canada's own resources page points claimants at:
| What you are looking for | Where it is held |
|---|---|
| Deposits and instruments at a federally regulated bank or trust company | Bank of Canada Unclaimed Properties Office, unclaimedproperties.bankofcanada.ca |
| Stocks, equity shares and dividends | Your province's securities commission, for example the Ontario Securities Commission |
| Property left over from a bankruptcy | Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada |
| Provincially held unclaimed property in Alberta | alberta.ca/unclaimed-property |
| Provincially held unclaimed property in British Columbia | bcunclaimed.ca |
| Provincially held unclaimed property in New Brunswick | fcnb.ca/en/unclaimed-property |
| Provincially held unclaimed property in Quebec | revenuquebec.ca, unclaimed property section |
Those four provincial addresses are the ones the Bank of Canada links to. We loaded the Alberta, British Columbia and New Brunswick registries on 4 August 2026 and all three answered. The Revenu Quebec page refused our automated request that day, which says nothing about whether it works in a normal browser. We are not listing registries for the other provinces and territories because we could not confirm that they exist, and we would rather leave a gap than invent one.
A word about finder firms
Because the registry is public, there is an industry built on top of it. The Bank of Canada addresses this on its own site: some firms use content from its website, or other publicly available information, as part of paid services to find claimants and assist with claims. It also states, in the same breath, that claimants are not required to authorize a third party, and there is no fee associated with searching for and initiating a property claim.
If a company contacts you about money you did not know about and wants a percentage, the whole of what they are selling is a free name search you can run yourself in two minutes. There is no rule against paying someone to do work for you. There is also no reason to, on a search this simple. The only genuinely fiddly part of a claim is the entitlement paperwork, and a finder firm cannot produce a 1997 passbook you do not have either.
How to make sure this never happens to your money
Everything above is retrieval. Prevention is cheaper, and it comes down to three things.
- Keep your address current at every institution, including the ones you do not use. Section 439 notices go to your recorded address. That single fact explains most of the 3.6 million balances sitting in Ottawa.
- Close accounts you have finished with, or use them. A dormant account is not just a sweep risk. It is also where monthly fees quietly accumulate, and where fraud goes unnoticed longest because nobody is looking at the statements.
- Do not spread money across accounts you cannot name from memory. If you cannot list your accounts without checking, you already have the conditions that produce an unclaimed balance.
The accounts that get forgotten are the ones nothing flows through
Dormancy is a byproduct of holding an account you never touch. The cure is boring: one everyday account that your pay or your benefits actually land in, and no fee quietly eroding whatever is parked elsewhere. KOHO is a Canadian no fee prepaid Mastercard account that takes direct deposit and e-Transfer and sends a notification on every transaction, which is the closest thing there is to a guarantee you will notice an account going quiet. Be clear about what it is not: it is not a bank, deposits are held differently than at a chartered bank, it does nothing about an old balance already transferred to the Bank of Canada, and paid plans exist alongside the free one. Check the current plan terms and fees on the provider's own page before you sign up.
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The plain English version of the rules banks would rather you skimmed: what they can take, what they must tell you, the fee caps that came into force in 2026, and the exact complaint path with the deadlines that apply. One file, no fluff.
Common questions
The Bank of Canada Unclaimed Properties Office publishes the figures on its own site. As at 31 December 2025 it held 3.6 million unclaimed bank balances with a total value of $1.60 billion. In the whole of 2025 it paid 1,937 claims worth $20.0 million. Dividing the total value by the total number gives an average balance of roughly $444, while the average claim actually paid in 2025 was roughly $10,300, which tells you the balances people successfully chase are the big ones.
No. The Bank of Canada states that there is no fee associated with searching for and initiating a property claim, and that the Unclaimed Properties Office does not charge a fee for processing a claim. You may still face incidental costs of proving entitlement, such as notarization. Private firms sell paid services built on the same public information. You are never required to authorize a third party, and the Bank says so itself.
No, and this is the point most Canadian articles get wrong. The Unclaimed Properties Office holds balances of less than $1,000 for 30 years and balances of $1,000 or more for 100 years, then transfers anything still unclaimed to the Receiver General for Canada. Section 22 of the Bank of Canada Act frames the shorter clock as 40 years from the last transaction or statement at the original institution, which, after the 10 years of inactivity that triggered the transfer, works out to roughly 30 years of custody at the Bank.
Section 438(1) of the Bank Act sets the trigger. Where a deposit made in Canada and payable in Canada has had no transaction and no statement of account requested or acknowledged for 10 years, the bank must pay it to the Bank of Canada by 31 December of that year, and that payment discharges the bank from all liability. The same rule catches a cheque, draft or bill of exchange issued, certified or accepted by a bank in Canada and never paid. Section 439 requires notice by mail and by electronic means in the January following the two, five and nine year marks.
No. The Unclaimed Properties Office does not hold RRSP or RRIF accounts, apart from The Canada RSP and Canada RIF plans, TFSA accounts, life insurance policies, balances at credit unions and caisses populaires that are not federally regulated, balances at utilities and other companies, gold or silver certificates, safety deposit boxes, stocks and dividends, land and livestock, or gift certificates. For stocks and dividends it points to your province's securities commission. For provincially held property it points to registries in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Quebec, and to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy.
Your bank must warn you before it happens. Nobody tells you after. Section 439 of the Bank Act requires the notices in the January following the two, five and nine year marks, by mail and by electronic means, and the nine year notice must say where to find out how to claim. After the transfer, the Bank of Canada states that balance holders are not automatically notified. If you moved and never updated your address at an old bank, you received nothing at all.
Only some of it, and only for 10 years. Interest is paid for the first 10 years of custody on balances that were transferred as an interest bearing savings account. All other deposits and instruments earn no interest. Section 438(3) of the Bank Act is the source: the Bank is liable for the amount plus interest where interest was payable under the terms of the deposit, for a period not exceeding ten years from the day it received the payment, at a rate the Minister determines.
Yes, if you can show you are entitled to act. The Bank defines a claimant as a living account owner or their authorized representative such as a power of attorney or public guardian and trustee, an heir or beneficiary of an estate with no will, an executor, administrator or liquidator of an estate with a will, or a signing officer of a business or corporation. Every claimant provides two pieces of identification, at least one with a photo and at least one showing a current address. Documents must be in English or French, and foreign documents need certified translation and notarization.
Then you cannot use the upload portal for the documents. The Bank of Canada requires claims exceeding $5,000 in value to have their documentation mailed to the Bank of Canada, Unclaimed Properties Office, 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9. The claim itself is still initiated online.
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- Why a Canadian bank account gets frozen, and how to get access back
- What happens to a bank account when someone dies in Canada
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Disclosure: Some links on this page are referral links, and Bremo may earn a commission if you open an account, at no cost to you. This does not change what we recommend. Sources, all read on 4 August 2026: the Bank of Canada Unclaimed Properties Office at unclaimedproperties.bankofcanada.ca, for the statistics as at 31 December 2025, the lists of property held and not held, the retention periods, the fee and interest statements, the claim steps, the identification and entitlement document requirements, the $5,000 mailing threshold, the mailing address, the definition of a claimant, the third party authorization requirement and the provincial registry links; and sections 438 and 439 of the Bank Act, S.C. 1991, c. 46, and section 22 of the Bank of Canada Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. B-2, from the consolidated texts published by the Department of Justice on the Justice Laws website, both shown as current to 14 June 2026. The averages calculated in "The numbers" section are our own arithmetic from the Bank's published figures and are not published by the Bank. Statutes are amended and administrative processes change, so confirm the current requirements on the Bank of Canada's own site before you act. This is educational general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.