UNCLAIMED

Northern Advocate, 7 February 1928, Page 10

UNCLAIMED

INSURANCE POLICIES,

£15.000 IN ONE OFFICE

L*UCKY THEATRE EMPLOYES,

SYDNEY, This Day.

A few days ago Mr William Patrick Clines, an employee in one of the Sydney theatres, in response to an advertisement, called Jat the office -of the City iMutukl Life Assurance Society. Instead of being asked to pay come overdue premiums, he found that a policy which he held there had ma--tured, ami there was a matter of some hundreds of pounds awaiting .collection.

For nine years the insurance office was endeavouring to trace this policy holder. He had been given up, but it was decided to make a final attempt to communicate with his people before the unclaimed policy was paid over to the Government in accordance with an Act which provides that moneys unclaimed after six years are to go to the State revenue. This period would have elapsed at the end of this month.

So an advertisement, couched in terms both original and appealing, was inserted in the personal column of the “Sydney Morning Herald," and a few days later the missing man reported to the office from which it was issued.

Singularly enough, he had been in Sydney all the time. He explained the reason for his silence by stating that, as he had failed to pay the last couple of premiums, he thought the policy had lapsed. Previous advertisements had given him the impression that he was wanted to pay up deficiencies, when as a matter of fact the policy had been kept alive by the bonuses that it had brought in. So delighted was he when the news was communicated to him that he wanted to make the insurance office a present of some of his small fortune, and when this was declined ho insisted upon the young lady secretary having a scat for herself and a friend at a theatre.

An official of an insurance office remarked that there must be hundreds of similar cases in Sydney. Many people seemed to have the idea, he said, that if a premium was not paid the whole of the money paid iu was forfeited. That, of course, was wrong. The bonuses were often sufficient to meet the outstanding payments, and on maturity of the policy not only its fee value, but the amount of accumulated bonuses, less the delayed premiums, were handed over to the holder.

“In the next twelve months," 1 this official observed, “we should pay from £12,000 to £15,000 on matured policies for which we cannot find the owners; and the same thing must apply to other officers. The holders have cither left the State or are dead, or they probably imagine, as this man did, that their policies have lapsed. I wish we could trace them."