When the state inherits what was forgotten

The Swiss regime for dormant bank assets (since 2015)

My professional insights · Lyudmil Karaulanov · 5 min read

Published: 1 October 2026 · Version 1.0

The context

In the 1990s the Swiss banks were at the centre of a sharp international dispute over the accounts of Holocaust victims that had lain untouched for decades. In 1998 it ended with a settlement of 1.25 billion dollars. The long and painful process left open the question of what should happen to assets whose owners or heirs no one is looking for.

The answer came with a new statutory regime, in force from 1 January 2015, together with rules of the Swiss Bankers Association on the handling of such assets. In December 2015 the banks published the first list on a dedicated website.

The central thesis

The rule is simple. When the bank has had no contact with the client for at least 60 years, and the value of the assets exceeds 500 francs or is unknown, the name of the holder is published. Entitled persons have one year to file a claim, and where contact was lost before 1955 the period is five years. If no one comes forward, the assets are transferred to the state and the claims are extinguished.

The first list contained just over 2,600 names, linked to around 44 million francs, as well as some 80 safe deposit boxes of unclear content and ownership. A further 300 or so names were added the following year. According to the Swiss Bankers Association, publication is a last attempt to restore contact with the client or the client’s heirs, and for the banks it creates legal certainty.

What is often overlooked

The common picture of Swiss banks as keepers of forgotten fortunes misses the essential point: the regime was created to bring these cases to a close, not to preserve them indefinitely. And the results are sobering. According to the bankers’ association, in the first year an entitled person was found for only about one in twenty of the assets that had remained without contact for decades. Specialists in tracing heirs note that many of the published records lack even a date of birth or a nationality.

It is also overlooked that the rules have a preventive purpose as well: to keep contact from being lost. The bank is obliged to maintain the contact. But the client is the only one who can tell it who should be looked for.

A reading for the owner

The Swiss case is the most honest experiment on what happens when the chain of inheritance is broken. Sixty years are enough for two or three generations to pass. Each of them could have sought the assets, but did not know about them. In the end the heir turns out to be the state.

The conclusion for the owner is that time is not neutral. Every year of silence erases memories, puts witnesses out of reach and weakens the documents. The institution holding the assets does not actively look for the heirs. It waits for them to appear. We develop this theme in detail in the analysis “Where is the key to the vault?”.

The limit of applicability

The Swiss regime is an extreme example: sixty years and public announcement. Most forgotten assets never get that far, and some of them are of modest value. The conclusion should not be drawn from it that every forgotten account inevitably goes to the state. Different legal systems deal with the question differently.

In Bulgaria heirs have the Register of Bank Accounts and Safe Deposit Boxes at the Bulgarian National Bank, through which they can identify the accounts of the deceased in Bulgarian banks. It does not, however, cover accounts abroad, and there such access for heirs rarely exists.

The point of instability

What this concept means →

The point of instability arrives when the family relies on the bank to find the heirs. The bank keeps the assets, but it does not keep the memory of them. If the owner has left no trace, after a certain time the right passes not to his children but to the state.

This material is of a general analytical nature and does not constitute individual legal, tax, financial or investment advice.