Dormant Assets Bill introduced in Lords

The Dormant Assets Bill has been introduced into the House of Lords and has had its first reading.  The Bill proposes expansions to the current scheme to include not only bank and building society assets, but also long-term insurance assets, pension assets, investment assets, client money assets and securities assets, as defined.  Each type of eligible asset must be crystallised or converted to cash before it can be transferred to a reclaim fund.  The Bill sets the process for the transfer of each type of eligible asset to an authorised reclaim fund, and sets out what “dormant” means in each case. It also provides for further expansion of the scheme if appropriate and contains miscellaneous other provisions, mainly aimed at how the schemes operate in relation to more than one type of asset.  The new Bill does not propose repealing the 2008 Act, and will operate alongside it, but it does amend the approach for distributing funding in England, so it is more aligned to the approach used in the other parts of the UK.