ClaimFinder

Sample notification, in theoretical partnership
What the Bank of America app could look like (if they partnered with us)

Inspiration

Have you ever wondered what happens to overpayments, old accounts, and undelivered money? When money gets lost on its way to its intended recipient, it gets recovered by a state agency for unclaimed property in whatever state the money was lost in. This means that the money you overspent on a concert ticket, that health insurance refund you forgot about, or that your bank account from elementary school is still out there! It's just on a state’s unclaimed property website that you’ve never been told about. In fact, there are over 47 billion dollars in unclaimed property in the US with one in every seven Americans having a claim. However, because this money is essentially an interest-free loan, the states have no incentive to reach out and inform citizens they have unclaimed property.

What it does

Quickly after discovering this industry, we discovered that our friends and family had thousands of dollars in unclaimed property. Just by reaching out, we got dozens of positive responses from people that had discovered that they or their parents had unclaimed property. Our business is developing search technology to automate the collection of unclaimed property from government sites. We will then license this tech to businesses with financial apps or banks, empowering them to delight consumers with money they didn’t know they had. Banks or fintech companies who are typically known for overcharging, high fees for the first time will be able to give something in return, helping them boost their customer retention rates while lowering their acquisition costs.

How we built it

We built our prototype using Python and Figma. We also built our internet presence website using Wix.

Challenges we ran into

One of our main challenges was figuring out the technology stack to work with, dealing with school assignments as we worked on the idea, and finally being able to stay up late to execute our vision.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the little efforts that we've taken to show that the idea can work. From helping our friend Sarah realize she has $70 from Nike to one of our faculty Dr David Townsend realizing that he has $200+ with the VA state treasury, we're proud of the changes that we're bringing to make this world a better place, one claim at a time! To many more success stories :)

What we learned

We learned python web-scraping skills, explored AWS technologies, and honed our ability to create app/web design interfaces in Figma. We also learned how to validate an idea, market it, and build a basic prototype.