The insurer told the Sunday Tribune last week that 7,273 people with addresses in the Republic of Ireland had so far failed to claim their windfalls.

One policy-holder from County Kildare has a Lottostyle payout worth over £116,000 ( 170,000) waiting to be picked up.

About 94,000 Irish customers with Standard Life qualified for free shares last July. Over 20,000 of those were clients who had minimum-value policies that cost just 10 a month. They received a minimum allocation of 185 shares, which at Friday's closing price are now worth over 800.

Standard Life estimated that about 30,000 Irish carpet-baggers had taken out policies to get free shares.

The outfit also had about 9,000 clients who took out SSIAs with it, with about one-third of those being cashed in as they mature.

Standard Life said that shares worth a total of £272m ( 404m) have yet to be claimed by some 235,000 customers. The unclaimed stock represents about 4.2% of the company's equity. If the shares are still not claimed by the year 2016, they will be used for general corporate purposes.

Standard Life said it intends to start sending reminders to policy-holders over the coming weeks in an effort to whittle down the number of outstanding beneficiaries.

About 7,000 people are still coming forward to claim their shares every month, but 10% of those who were entitled to claim shares or cash have still not come forward.

By July, shareholders who have held on to their holdings for 12 months since the flotation will receive one additional share for every 20 they own.