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:
- Company gazette — You are not paid interest on this money because the company has sent your details to ASIC but not the money itself. Therefore you will need to claim money from the company and not from ASIC.
- Deregistered company trust money — This type of money is technically not unclaimed money. It can be found through our unclaimed money search, however, interest will not be paid.
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.
- Amount — amount of unclaimed money (in future years any previous financial year interest will be added to the original amount).
- Days interest payable — the number of days in the financial year for which interest is payable including the extra 14 days that allows for processing your claim.
The interest for each financial year is rounded to the nearest cent (down 0 - 4 and up 5 - 9).