Hi sleuthers,
This is a bit long + confusing so be patient with me
. .
Find unclaimed money | ASIC's MoneySmart
Type in Marion Barter on this ASIC search page and you’ll bring up the $14889.70 unclaimed funds. Click on the cross where it says ‘more details’ and you’ll see it says Money From: Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The ‘Last known address (account/owner)’ box states ‘Barclays Bank mint St Rye…’
Now just for a comparison type in a different common name to this search page and see how the listings are set out. The ‘last known address’ section is usually just a street address or a Post office box as you would expect. In Marion’s case it’s a street address for a UK bank, so this is what has caused the confusion, its making it look at first glance like Marion had a Barclays account.
These unclaimed funds of $14889.70 refer to an amount sent to ASIC from the Commonwealth Bank, not from Barclays in the UK. The Barclays Mint St address was (for reasons not clear) a contact address for this Commonwealth bank account. CBA is affiliated with Barclays so not sure if this was an address suggested to Marion by CBA as a temporary UK address to use when overseas.
It is mentioned very briefly by Sally in the end of this conversations episode;
Conversations 12 at about 47.30 mins
‘Barclays Bank Mint St in Rye was my mum’s nominated address in the UK, so not the fact that the money was sitting in Barclays Bank but that my mum’s address in the UK was listed as Mint St on Rye which is a Barclays Bank. And the money was not actually sitting in the bank as we first thought, turns out the CBA has affiliates with banks throughout the world and Barclays Bank is the one for the UK’
So Marion never had a UK bank account. Well not one that we know of anyway. This was just money held in a Commonwealth Bank account returned to ASIC as unclaimed as per the usual process, but with an unusual and confusing contact address for the account holder.
Thoughts?