Feb. 1 is National Unclaimed Property Day, and as your state auditor and Arkansas’ unclaimed property administrator, my job is to return people their missing money as it is reported to my office.Unclaimed property is financial in nature, usually forgotten bank accounts, unpaid life insurance benefits, stock or mutual fund shares, or some other account that holds monetary or tangible items for which the owner has not initiated any activity for several years. When that happens and the bank or business entity cannot locate the owner of such accounts, the money or properties are submitted to my office. Nearly 33 million people in the United States – 1 in 7 – have unclaimed property.In Arkansas, the odds are even better. With $400 million in unclaimed property, 1 in 4 Arkansans likely has unclaimed money with my office.Let’s take it back a few years. Prior to being elected as your Auditor of State, I served for 8 years as your Treasurer of State where I secured more than $600 million in investment returns for Arkansas. When campaigning for state auditor, I made Arkansans two promises: I would convert the Auditor of State’s outdated payroll system to the Arkansas Administrative Statewide Information System, or AASIS, which most state agencies use. Second, I would be the Auditor of State who returned the most unclaimed property in history back to citizens. In my first year as Auditor of State, I began the transition from an old, out-of-date accounting system to the AASIS system, and on July 1, 2024, that process was completed successfully. Making good on my second promise, I returned more than $36 million in unclaimed property back to citizens during my first full fiscal year in office – more money than any other fiscal year in at least the last decade.Most people don’t know this about me, but I was a small businessman for 35 years, starting my own company from scratch and, with God’s blessing, expanding it into 17...
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