According to the Daily Telegraph, there is an estimated £50bn of unclaimed assets sitting in dormant accounts in the UK. A financial asset search can help you find any unknown assets.
Assets you might not know about
Many people discover assets they didn’t know about when administering an estate. Often these are only discovered by chance, which can mean unnecessary costs and delays to the process.
Unknown assets often include:
banks and building society accounts
personal pensions
investments
life assurance policies
shareholdings
National Savings & Investments (NS&I) holdings
What is a financial asset search?
A financial asset search is an easy and cost-effective way of finding all the assets that are due to an estate. It can form part of your due diligence when undertaking your duty as Executor.
This type of search is a legitimate estate expense. That means you can either use the estate money (if you already have access to it) or pay yourself back later from the estate.
What you’ll need to run a search
There are a few companies that offer a financial asset search to non-solicitors. Estate Search offer a market-leading comprehensive service that covers over 200 financial organisations and 350 financial databases. Their searches reveal an unknown asset in 56% of cases.
To run a search, you will need the personal information for the person who died, including their:
National Insurance number
last 5 years of address history
Death Certificate
Will (if there is one)
If there’s no Will, you’ll need a birth or marriage certificate, showing your relationship to the person.
After you upload details to their portal, they use their integrations with hundreds of companies and financial databases in the UK to find any unknown assets. You’ll get notifications in real-time when a financial institution reports a ‘match’, and information on how to claim the asset.
Different financial institutions take longer than others. Some will only take a few days to respond, others may take up to 8 weeks.
Need help?
Our support services can guide you through the Confirmation process.