Banks, retirement fund firms, insurance companies and the JSE are sitting on more than R90bn in unclaimed benefits belonging to members of the public, including R4.5bn in unclaimed dividends. They are trying to trace millions of beneficiaries who might not know they are due a payout. Radebe Sipamla, co-portfolio manager at Mergence Investment Managers, outlined some of the challenges of tracing beneficiaries. This has been slow, due in part to the historical migrant labour system, where people would work in the cities and retire in the apartheid-era homelands ignorant of the benefits/funds owing to them or living in areas with limited to non-existent street names or numbering in rural areas and townships making it difficult to correctly identify their addresses.