Mr. Sweet told National Underwriter that among insurance-related items, by far the most-prevalent unclaimed properties his bureau receives are insurance-premium overpayments. "Someone pays their monthly premium and they end up getting credit refunds," he said.

"We get a lot of car-insurance premium refunds," Mr. Sweet noted, adding that he sees health insurance refunds high up on the list as well. The average premium refund his department receives, he added, is $106.

In Florida, the law requires that if insurance companies have premium refunds for customers, the carriers must try to notify the owner for five years before sending them off to the state as unclaimed properties. So all the premium refunds that end up with the Bureau of Unclaimed Property have been held by insurance companies for this five-year period, Mr. Sweet said.

Mr. Sweet also remarked that these numbers in Florida are not necessarily uncommon, but are seen in other parts of the country as well. "I would think these are seen across various states?they are certainly not unique to Florida," he commented.

For insureds, one piece of advice Mr. Sweet offers is to keep in contact with the insurers they are doing business with, to make sure that these companies are made aware of any changes of address the insureds may have in case of relocation.

To his bureau's credit, Mr. Sweet said that his staff manages to return a significant amount of unclaimed properties to their rightful owners every year. "Last year, we got $172 million in unclaimed properties, and we returned about $77 million?so our return rate last year was about 45 percent," Mr. Sweet said. "That's a pretty typical rate of return from year to year."

The Financial Services' Bureau of Unclaimed Property in Florida says the insureds can log onto its Web site, www.fltreasurehunt.org, to check whether they have any overpaid premiums waiting in the state's coffers.