Helping Uncover Britain’s Missing Billions
There are billions of pounds held by financial institutions in the UK. Our mission is to reunite this money with its rightful owners.
Whilst some people keep meticulous financial records, a lot of us aren’t so organised. If you’ve got a new job, moved home or changed your name, it can be very easy to lose touch with accounts, pensions and policies.
Estatesearch can help.
In the UK we face a challenge! It is estimated that there is over £200 billion in unclaimed assets in the UK. This includes £1.45 billion and rising in banks and building societies[1], £3.4 Billion in National Savings and Investments and £640 Million in dormant share registrations[2]. Furthermore, there is thought to be anywhere between £15 billion and £200 billion in unclaimed pension pots and life insurance policies[3].
So, what does this mean? For consumers, it’s easy to forget a company pension that was set up years ago or that premium bonds that were purchased in the dim and distant past. However, with the cost-of-living crisis continuing to escalate it is even more important that people protect and keep track of their assets, and this means people need to pay more attention to planning ahead for what happens to their assets when they are gone.
Making a Will helps to ensure your wishes are carried out, however if it isn’t up to date and inclusive of ALL the assets in the estate, it could mean that loved ones are missing out and that the executors and the legal professionals helping them have to dig deeper to ensure everything is uncovered. We recently commissioned a survey of 2,000 UK residents conducted by independent market research firm Danebury Research and found that less than half (47%) have a Will and of these, less than a third said that it was up to date (28%). The survey highlights the real challenges which families and their executors face when it comes to identifying and locating the assets of the deceased.
Helping Uncover Britain’s Missing Billions
As a legal technology company helps legal firms working on bereavement and loss of mental capacity cases. As one of the founders of the Vulnerable Banking Group, we have long been advocates of protecting those who are most at risk, particularly when it comes to uncovering unclaimed or forgotten assets to ensure beneficiaries receive funds that are rightfully theirs when a relative passes away.
The Experian Unclaimed Asset Register (UAR) was decommissioned on 29th August 2022. This service from Experian was a useful part of the jigsaw by which professionals could trace lost assets belonging to deceased or vulnerable clients, which is why we now offer an alternative service as a component of our award-winning Financial Profile Service’s Premium offering, alongside other important routine checks including an Anti-Money Laundering check, Company Directorship search and Office of the Public Guardian search.
Find out more
If you would like to find out more about we can help, simply fill in the form below and we’ll be in touch.
- [1]: Source: The Reclaim Fund Ltd
- [2]: Source: Dormant Asset Commission Report 2016
- [3]: ‘Gone Away’ figures from a 2016 FCA Thematic Review suggest £15bn. Extrapolated to 2023, we estimate that the figure could be closer to £200bn