The Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) has in its custody unclaimed financial assets amounting to Sh57 billion as majority of Kenyans remain ignorant or unaware of their entitlement to the benefits.
Top management of the agency told participants at a national conference yesterday that most Kenyans are yet to access their unclaimed assets due to lack of information about the same.
The disclosure comes at a time when various bodies among them Nairobi Securities Exchange and Association of Kenya Insurers confirmed they have huge unclaimed assets which they intend to release to the authority to support its process to unify the assets with their owners.
John Mwangi, UFAA chief executive and managing trustee, however, stated that the process of identifying the owners of the assets encounter various challenges like lack of proper data about the initial status of the same.
“In our mission to unite Kenyans with their unclaimed assets, a number of issues have emerged, for example, low rate of access and bottlenecks attached to the same. However, our expectation is that the campaign we are undertaking on unification will help in making Kenyans more aware of their unclaimed assets,” he said.
During the conference, Mwangi confirmed the authority has in its custody Sh57 billion worth of unclaimed assets both shares and assets and Kenyans have continued to receive them once proper data has been documented.
“To date we have been able to enable Kenyans to access Sh2 billion unclaimed assets and the process is going on through partnering with other institutions to unite more Kenyans,” he added.
Running campaigns
Through the unification process Kenyans can access their unclaimed assets online through using the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages.
“One is required to seek information on unclaimed assets by dialing x361# we are running campaigns across various regions to sensitise Kenyans on how to identify their assets,” Mwangi added.
UFAA chairman Kigo Njenga stated that the unification process will be hastened as part of increasing disposable income to Kenyans in order to participate in support of the Bottom up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA).
“We will continue to invest the assets in government securities and social bonds like housing projects as part of safeguarding it, for example, education and housing projects,” he said.
In the US, for example, unclaimed assets are invested in education and other social activities like housing. He called on Parliament to hasten amendment of the UFAA Act No. 4 of 2011 to enable Kenyans donate their free assets to various legal, social and economic courses of institutions.
“We urge the institutions holding the unclaimed assets like the abandoned wages and fines to release them to UFAA to hasten the uunification process,” he said.
