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Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The amendment raises interesting issues. Whatever organisation is operating, it is unusual for it not to have some form of overdraft facility. It is often a question of smoothing flows of money. If the reclaim fund can be confident that money is coming in, there is nothing particularly pernicious about borrowing against a serious demand from one of its clients. If it did not have that power, it would find itself extremely restricted. Inflows of money are liable to take a very regular form. The fund may well have made commitments to people who are going to give it money, and it might find that it could not meet them in the timescale those clients were looking for. We should consider whether the reclaim fund should have a borrowing facility.