As of early July, the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (UAPF) held about 63 billion tenge in unclaimed pension savings of deceased Kazakhstani citizens. These funds remain in the accounts of more than 290,000 people, with nearly 170,000 of them unclaimed for over ten years, according to infohub.kz.
The fund notes that the average amount in such an account is about 216,000 tenge, but the median is only 35,000 tenge. Lawyers explain that accepting an inheritance is a right, not an obligation. Therefore, if along with small savings the heir may inherit large debts, people often refuse the property.
Lawyer Sergey Utkin explains: "There might be 30-50 thousand, but people don't know. Maybe it would be worth filing an application with a notary and getting it all sorted, but they didn't file on time, six months passed. Now the notary refuses to process it. He says go to court. And they think, damn, for 30-50 thousand, you'll spend more on litigation than you'll get."
Meanwhile, the UAPF does not notify relatives of a deceased contributor about the existence of pension savings. The law does not impose such an obligation on the fund, but experts believe it should. Economist Marat Abdurakhmanov suggests: "Amendments to the pension law are needed, so that in the event of death, the system would be recorded through the eGov system. And the heir should receive a message about the pension savings of the deceased."
To receive the pension savings of a deceased relative, the heir must contact a notary within six months and open an inheritance case. The notary will check the availability of funds in the UAPF and determine the circle of heirs. After that, a certificate of inheritance is issued, with which one can apply for payment. However, the six-month period applies specifically to accepting the inheritance; the money can be obtained later, but through court.