Most people have lost the likes of a bank card, umbrella or mobile phone at some time. Surprisingly, though, many Britons also lose track of their savings and current accounts. Up to £15 billion is held in about half a million “dormant” accounts – where the bank or building society has been unable to contact the holder – but now there is a free website dedicated to reuniting this cash with its owners.

Mylostaccount.org.uk brings together the tracing schemes of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), the Building Societies Association (BSA) and National Savings & Investments (NS&I) – which also covers lost Premium Bonds – and allows users to start a search online. This involves completing as much as possible of a six-page form. To ease the ten-minute process, it is vital to have any account information to hand.

Forms are checked and then forwarded. If you know that your money was with HSBC, for example, your form goes to that bank’s tracing department. If you know that it was with a building society, but do not remember which, the BSA makes inquiries. And if you remember nothing about the account, beyond its existence, the information is passed to all participating institutions – all building societies and large banks. In the several cases where an institution has been taken over or merged, your search is referred to its successor.

Once you have submitted a search, you should hear back within three months, or one month for NS&I-only searches. Money held in dormant accounts is the property of the account holder and will remain so despite government plans to tap into the funds for good causes from next year. And institutions must keep basic account records indefinitely.

When an account is found, the institution will tell you how much money is in it, with interest accrued, and how to access it. If, however, you do not hear anything within the specified period, or the search draws a blank, you should contact the relevant organisation, at www.bba.org.uk or www.bsa.org.uk , or the specific institution, where possible. Should this fail, go to the Financial Ombudsman at financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

The web can help users to trace a range of further “lost” assets. Experi-an’s Unclaimed Assets Register, for example, at UAR.co.uk, has a data-base of life policies, pensions, unit trust holdings and share dividends from many companies. This can be searched for £18, 10 per cent of which is donated to Share Gift, the charity. For lost pensions, first try the Government’s free tracing service at thepensionservice.gov.uk.

Another website of interest has a much narrower target. Restore UK, at restoreuk.org.uk, is the BBA agency that aims to restore the British bank accounts of Holocaust victims to their heirs.

CASE STUDY A PREMIUM FIND

GEMMA CARR lost track of her Premium Bonds when she moved to Caversham, Berkshire, after studying in Edinburgh. The 29-year-old PhD student’s grandfather had given her £100 of bonds at birth and she had won “the odd £50” as a teenager, but she could not find any paperwork. “I called my mother, who suggested NS&I’s tracing service,” she says.

Ms Carr used the paper-based tracing service, collecting a search form from her local Post Office. She says that the process was quick and hassle-free. It turned out that an £80 prize had been reinvested in the bonds early in her childhood and that she had won £50 more recently. “I will keep the money in the bonds,” she says. “You never know when you’ll get lucky.”

She adds that the new online service would have made the process even more convenient.