(The Center Square) — State Treasurer Dale Folwell on Thursday returned more than a half-million dollars to the state Board of Education stemming from an old insurance policy.
Folwell presented a check for $519,029.16 from a former Prudential Financial group life insurance plan to North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt at the state Board of Education meeting on Thursday.
The money came from shares of stock issued in the name of "Department of Education State of North Carolina" associated with the years-old insurance plan. Prudential transitioned policyholders to shareholders through a demutualization process when it went from a mutual life insurance company to a publicly traded company in 2001.
The shares and information about them were sent to a previous address for the state Board of Education and were deemed unclaimed property in 2012. After a required three year hold on the unclaimed funds by Prudential, the company reported the funds to the Department of State Treasurer in October 2015.
The funds remained with DST's Unclaimed Property Division, known as NCCash.com, until it was discovered recently by staff during a review of the system's data, according to a Folwell announcement.
"At a time when so many schools are in need of money and resources, especially in rural and inner-city districts, every penny found to further North Carolina's educational mission is a blessing," Folwell said. "I see that need not only as a member of SBE, but as chairman of the Local Government Commission, which reviews and approves financing for school projects throughout North Carolina."
"As keeper of the public purse, a North Carolina taxpayer and a believer in the power of education to change a person's trajectory in life to achieve upward mobility and the joy of achievement, I am honored to return this money to its rightful owners so that it can be put to use where it's most needed," he said.
The SBE funds are among what's expected to be a record number of claims returned to North Carolinians during the current fiscal year. In fiscal year 2022, UPD paid 178,857 claims worth more than $105 million. Between June 30, 2022 and Nov. 30 2022, UPD has paid another 74,979 claims totaling over $44 million through NCCash.
The unclaimed funds come from a variety of sources, from old bank accounts, wages and utility deposits, to insurance proceeds, stocks, bonds and abandoned safe deposit boxes.
"Unclaimed property can result from a person or entity forgetting they are due money, or from a move of location and forgetting to provide a new address," according to the Folwell release. "It also could result from a typing error in a house number or zip code in an address, a name change, or data loss from a business converting to a computer system.
"As society becomes more mobile and steadily moves to electronic transactions, the risk of having unclaimed property has increased."
The DST's capacity to return the money, however, has also increased with technology, resulting in record numbers and amounts of claims returned in recent years.
A new NCCash Match program, for example, offers a new, expedited way for DST to return claims to owners. Through NCCash Match, UPD staff search records weekly to identify qualifying claims of $5,000 or less and mail notification letters to claimants alerting them about the funds.
That program is responsible for DST payments totaling $12.6 million for 44,200 claims between June 30 and November 30, 2022.
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