When a credit union with federal insurance is liquidated, the NCUA’s Asset Management and Assistance Center is responsible for paying the share accounts to the members. Invariably, some deposits may never be delivered to the rightful owners. Some checks are never cashed; or the credit union’s address information was incomplete. There are also cases when the NCUA did not have a recent address and were unable to get a forwarding address from the post office.

Share accounts claimed within the 18-month insurance period are paid at their full-insured amount. At the expiration of the 18-month insurance period, shares that are not claimed are considered uninsured and written down to share in the loss to the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund. Even if shares are uninsured when they are claimed, there may still be a distribution. On rare occasions, the liquidation of a credit union may result in surplus funds. If a surplus remains, a distribution to the shareholders is required. This may occur several years after the credit union is liquidated and it is sometimes difficult to locate those former credit union members.