The Bank of Canada has over six hundred million dollars of unclaimed money and if you're lucky maybe some of it belongs to you.

Senior Director of Communications at the Bank of Canada Jeremy Harrison says it doesn't hurt to check and it doesn't cost anything.

"We call these things unclaimed balances. In short you can think of them as forgotten or lost money. After ten years of inactivity on the part of a bank account owner it gets transferred from the financial institution to The Bank of Canada."

Harrison says they might have a little or a lot of cash for you.

"We have just over six hundred and twenty million dollars of unclaimed balances at The Bank of Canada, 1.7 million records and it does grow every year. Last year we received another 115,000 balances from financial institutions for a total of sixty-million."

He says they paid out over ten-million dollars to people in 2015.

He says if they have your money you have a little more time to collect it.

"Less than one thousand dollars is held at the Bank of Canada for an additional thirty years, after which time it does go over to the Receiver General. So, a total forty years from the last time the account would have been used. Ten at the bank it was at and another thirty at the Bank of Canada."

He says for balances over one-thousand dollars you have 110 years. Ten at the financial institution and an additional 100 years at the Bank of Canada before it's handed over to the Receiver General

For a link to Unclaimed Balances at The Bank of Canada click here: Unclaimed Balances - Banks

For Credit Union accounts click here:Unclaimed Balances - Credit Unions