IBA Compliance Connection

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The new Illinois unclaimed property law requires us to conduct a five-year lookback for our first report. When is that report due? Are we to review accounts with no activity in the five years before January 1, 2018, and file a report without turning over the property?

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The Illinois Revised Uniform Unclaimed Property Act (Illinois RUUPA) imposes a five-year lookback period for the initial report that must be filed under the new law. This initial report is due on November 1, 2018.

The initial report must include “all items of property that would have been presumed abandoned during the 5-year period preceding the effective date of this Act as if this Act had been in effect during that period.” Thus, the first report filed on November 1, 2018, also must include any property that became abandoned (under the new law) between January 1, 2013, and January 1, 2018, if not previously reported. Your bank very well may be holding unclaimed property that was not reported during this period, because the new Illinois RUUPA adds several types of property that were not reportable as abandoned under the law that was in effect prior to January 1, 2018.

Also, because the new Illinois RUUPA presumes that most property types are abandoned after three years of inactivity, including deposit and savings accounts, your lookback period generally must cover inactive accounts going back to 2010 (three years before the five-year lookback period start date of January 1, 2013). And for property types with longer presumed abandonment periods, your lookback will need to go back even further. For example, the presumed abandonment period for stored-value cards is five years, and so the lookback period for stored-value cards would go back to 2008 (five years before the lookback period start date of January 1, 2013).

Note that your bank also must deliver any property described in your initial report to the Illinois Treasurer, including all unclaimed property found under the “five-year” lookback period.

For resources related to our guidance, please see:

  • Illinois RUUPA, 765 ILCS 1026/15-403(a) (Requires a report of unclaimed property to be “filed before November 1 of each year and cover the 12 months preceding July 1 of that year. Business associations which must report under this subsection (a) include financial organizations . . . .”)

  • Illinois RUUPA, 765 ILCS 1026/15-1503(a) (“An initial report filed under this Act for property that was not required to be reported before the effective date of this Act, but that is required to be reported under this Act, must include all items of property that would have been presumed abandoned during the 5-year period preceding the effective date of this Act as if this Act had been in effect during that period.”)

  • Illinois RUUPA, 765 ILCS 1026/15-603(a) (“Except as otherwise provided in this Section, on filing a report under Section 15-401, the holder shall pay or deliver to the administrator the property described in the report.”)