Unclaimed dividends could be waiting for you

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), together with 22 listed companies, has ramped up the call to trace individuals and families that should benefit from the R88bn in unclaimedbenefits. Of this amount, at least R4.5bn is for unclaimed dividends, which is money companies accumulate and is paid to their shareholders and investors, who include employees. In 2024, the JSE started the Claim It campaign, which went live in February this year.

The campaign is to help people claim dividends easily, safely, and quickly. The campaign began with an educational drive using former Bafana Lucas Radebe as its ambassador. So far, 93,000 individuals have made contact with Claim It and 15,000 have been found to be eligible and have so far claimed over R18m.

About 700,000 people are eligible to claim. JSE has partners withSasol Group, Finbond Group Limited, Old Mutual, Wilson Bayly Holmes- Ovcon Limited, ADvTECH Limited, Cashbuild Limited, Super Group Limited, Naspers, Northam Platinum Holdings, Mpact Limited, Growthpoint Properties Limited, Vodacom, Merafe Resources, Redefine Properties and Exxaro Resources Ltd. JSE’s director of marketing and corporate affairs, Vuyo Lee, said some of the contributing factors in tracing beneficiaries are that people change jobs, home addresses and forget to update their banking information without notifying listed companies.

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This, in turn, has made it difficult to verify beneficiaries, delaying the distribution of unclaimed funds. “We are encouraging members of the public to come forward and check their statuses and the process is very quick and it’s also on WhatsApp. What we learnt from other campaigns is that what frustrated people a lot were the response times.

However, when you put your details in our portal, you will have an answer within five minutes. “We worked with a credit bureau agency to help us build a platform to help people check quickly. In that platform, they enriched a lot of data around the shareholder and the issue is that the shareholder data is old and that agency did was to ensure we put over 90% of the shareholders’ ID numbers and cellphone numbers to assist with a quick turnaround,” said Lee.

JSE also partnered with the department of home affairs, which assists in verifying applicants’ information. This also eliminates fraudsters and impostors. Besides the portal, Lee said they added a WhatsApp feature that allows possible beneficiaries to load their personal information and photos to make a claim in a safe environment.

She also warned people against fraudsters who might want to make contact with them. “Nobody at the JSE is going to call you because our campaign is inbound so you phone us. If anybody calls you, that is not us.”

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