A recent report was just released by the Office of the Inspector General Social Security Administration was titled, “Unclaimed Social Security Administration Assets Held by States and the District of Columbia”.

The objective of the report was to determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) timely recovered unclaimed assets, but we can extrapolate so much more from their findings. In preview, the results of the report were that SSA did not timely recover unclaimed assets.

5 states reported 1,171 unclaimed assets worth $933,414 (average of $797 per asset).

45 states and the District of Columbia listed 3,057 unclaimed assets held on SSA’s behalf; however, these states did not disclose the value of the assets.

Some of these assets have been lying dormant since the 1990s and early 2000s.

Some highlights:

1. Federal agencies use finders to recover unclaimed funds.

2. The sole Fiscal Service employee assigned to recover unclaimed assets for all Federal agencies said the workload is more than one person can do.

3. Officials cited the following barriers that prevented SSA from attempting to recover its own unclaimed assets:

a. Some assets included the names of co-owners (Agency officials stated that if an SSA property has a co-owner, most states will reject the claim),

b. Some assets did not include complete address information that SSA could link to an agency office (some states provide only limited information, but the lack of address information associated with these assets did not affect SSA’s ability to recover assets),

c. Recovery protocols varied state-to-state and SSA has limited resources to use internal efforts to recover unclaimed property (officials stated the asset recovery process was difficult because recovery protocols varied by state and in most cases, the states provide limited information on the unclaimed assets).

Depending on your political predilection, the fact the that the US Government loses track of assets may not be all that surprising, but the real story here is how aggressive the States are at seizing these assets and designing these unclaimed property programs in such a way that the information and recovery process is challenging for everyone.

The recommendation is that the SSA develop its own internal program to recover unclaimed assets. That is our recommendation to everyone, and an easy way to achieve that goal is to let a trusted third-party, Fletcher Recovery Group LLC, toil with the bureaucracy on your behalf.

Feel free to review the report here:

Unclaimed Social Security Administration Assets Held by States and the District of Columbia