How to find out if you are owed some of the $2.5 billion in unclaimed Canadian accounts

There are more than $2.5 billion worth of unclaimed bank accounts and non-land properties, such as dividends, in this country.

The Bank of Canada is holding $1.6 billion worth of unclaimed accounts, B.C. has another $222 million, there’s $168 million in Alberta, $515 million in Quebec and $47.2 million in New Brunswick.

The best part is that searching and reclaiming them is free.

At federally regulated institutions, inactive accounts become unclaimed if they are unused for a decade. Nationally, the Bank of Canada (BoC) holds onto these accounts, and they can be reclaimed before their deadlines. The BoC’s deadlines are 30 years for accounts worth under $1,000 and 100 years for more than $1,000. If the deadline passes, the federal government gets to keep the balance in the account.

Banks are legally required to notify account holders in the second, fifth and ninth year of an account’s inactivity.

You can also easily search online for unclaimed accounts by name.

“Canadians can visit the Bank of Canada’s Unclaimed Properties Office (UPO) website, where they can search if they have an unclaimed bank balance,” said BoC’s media relations specialist Amélie Ferron-Craig, in an email.

There are also provincial registries for Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Québec. The provinces keep the property according to their own deadlines, which vary from one year to 30 years.

Manitoba has no official unclaimed property registry despite passing unclaimed property legislation in 1988. Ontario has no substantial unclaimed property legislation and no unclaimed property registry.

Provincially, searching and claiming an account is free through the Alberta Tax and Revenue Administration, BC Unclaimed Property Society, FundsFinderNB and RevenuQuébec.

Typically, accounts go unclaimed after address or name changes, or death.

But they are reclaimable if you can provide proper documentation, such as identification. Processing times vary by registry.

The number of claims has grown in recent years.

“Over the past five years, $83.3 million … in unclaimed bank balances has been returned to rightful owners. The trend is improving — annual payouts have grown from $15.2 million in 2021 to $20 million in 2025, representing a 32 per cent increase over the period,” Ferron-Craig said.

New Brunswick’s registry is newer.

“With only a few years of data, it is too soon to identify meaningful trends in the amount of property being claimed,” said FundsFinderNB’s communication team in an email.

Alberta’s reclaiming trend decreased slightly during the COVID pandemic but has recovered.

“Claims trends declined during and shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic to a low of nearly $868,000 in 2023, and have increased to about $3.4 million in 2025,” according to the Alberta Tax and Revenue Administration.