Who owns the billions in Germany's dormant bank accounts?
Billions of euros sit untouched in dormant bank accounts in Germany. With heirs unaware and no central register in place, banks and politicians are debating
Billions of euros sit untouched in dormant bank accounts in Germany. With heirs unaware and no central register in place, banks and politicians are debating who should ultimately control the money. While Germany is trying to make major budget cuts, billions of euros are silently sitting in banks and other financial institutions, unused and unnoticed in so-called forgotten accounts. A 2021 report from the country's Research Ministry estimated that up to €4.2 billion ($4.9 billion) was in such accounts. Other estimates are much higher, some as high as €9 billion. The banks themselves haven't released any figures. As people get older, have multiple accounts or die, relatives and heirs have a hard time identifying accounts. Online banking, with no paperwork or printed statements, makes it more difficult because the information is locked up in email accounts or on hard drives. Non-traditional financial assets like cryptocurrencies or NFTs are even harder to keep track of. What is an abandoned account? Sticking to traditional financial assets, abandoned, forgotten or dormant accounts are simply bank deposits or securities, such as stocks and bonds, that remain untouched for a period of time. Though there may be lots of forgotten accounts in German banks, the good news is that there is no time limit to reclaim them Image: Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa/picture alliance In Germany, there is no official definition of abandoned accounts, and they can remain inactive for years. This lack of a legal framework has left the matter to the banks themselves, but most banks take the following into account The account holder has died, and no heirs can be found.
There has been no customer contact for years. Postal mail is returned and other contact data is outdated. This also leaves banks wiggle room in how much they invest in searching for owners or heirs. One big hurdle is the country's strict data protection rules. How to find abandoned German accounts? In Germany, dormant accounts do not become the property of banks or get handed over to the government. Banks must keep these accounts indefinitely, and ownership — whether by the original owner or their heirs — never expires. The German government can only claim an account if they are declared heir under the country's inheritance law, not under any unclaimed property regulations. The biggest measure needed is a central dormant account register that can be used to determine if someone held accounts somewhere, says Beatrice Eisenschmidt, a board member at VDEE, a Berlin-based association that represents professional heir finders. Today, inquiries must be sent to various banking associations, a process that takes time and money. For heirs, it is usually a shot in the dark without knowing if there are any assets at all. "For this reason, many heirs choose not to pursue these inquiries," Eisenschmidt told DW. Attempts to create a national registry Nearly a decade ago, Norbert Walter-Borjans, then finance minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the country's most populous state, estimated that about €2 billion ($2.2 billion at the time) was held in dormant accounts across Germany. He called for a national registry of dormant assets, and several attempts have been made since then. The current federal government, headed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has come up with draft legislation to create a central, publicly accessible online register where heirs can search for information.
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