Trust in a Digital Age: Overcoming Systemic Difficulties in Returning Unclaimed Property

Each year, in California alone the state government takes in almost 9 billion dollars of unclaimed property from its residents. Unclaimed property can be defined as any property that is left to a specific person without their knowledge, most likely money given to an individual based on a will or a old bank account that had been closed. The process of identifying the owners of unclaimed funds as well as claiming funds once the owner has been found has been notoriously difficult with little changes made by the government to make the process easier for citizens to claim their property.

In this paper, I will examine the history of unclaimed funds and ways in which the government has systematically made it difficult for this property to be returned to its rightful owner. I will acknowledge the reasons that people’s lack of trust in government leads them to avoid searching for their funds on their own. I will also describe the ways in which modern financial scamming has only increased the difficulty for citizens to find these funds while navigating the online financial scams that exist.

Finally, I will propose an alternative method of reaching out to individuals who have unclaimed property, describing a business model that people can trust to help them get this money back. By relying on some psychology, I will focus on the trust that people inherently have in charities to describe a partnership with my business and charities in order to effectively return this unclaimed property back into the hands of its rightful owner.

Shaw, Sydney. (2019). Trust in a Digital Age: Overcoming Systemic Difficulties in Returning Unclaimed Property
. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/kc382ry5557