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Interest paid on unclaimed money

Adding interest to lost money

Page reading time: 1 minute

From 1 July 2013 you are paid interest on unclaimed money held by ASIC. ASIC holds unclaimed bank accounts, shares and life insurance. Here we explain how these interest payments work.

The interest period for unclaimed money

Interest on unclaimed money is payable from 1 July 2013. There is no interest payable for the period before this. No tax is paid on the interest you earn.

The date you are paid interest from will be shown in your unclaimed money search record. The interest will be calculated from that date to 14 days after your claim is approved to allow for your claim to be processed and your cheque to be issued.

When interest is not payable on unclaimed money

Interest will not be paid on the following types of unclaimed money:

These types of lost money will be listed as 'Company gazette' and 'Deregistered company trust money' in your unclaimed money search.

How unclaimed money interest is calculated

The interest rate is based on the percentage change in CPI (Consumer Price Index).

Financial year Interest rate
2013-14 2.5% or 0.0250
2014-15 2.93% or 0.0293
2015-16 1.33% or 0.0133
2016-17 1.31% or 0.0131
2017-18 2.13% or 0.0213
2018-19 1.9% or 0.0190
2019-20 1.33% or 0.0133
2020-21 2.19% or 0.0219
2021-22 1.11% or 0.0111
2022-23 5.09% or 0.0509
2023-24 7.02% or 0.0702
2024-25 3.62% or 0.0362

The calculation method is: (amount x days interest payable x interest rate) divided by the days in the financial year.

The interest for each financial year is rounded to the nearest cent (down 0 - 4 and up 5 - 9).