Whilst some people keep meticulous financial records, most 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 or policies.
Whilst there are services like My Lost Account (https://www.mylostaccount.org.uk), they only cover 70 financial institutions, and then they only trace accounts that are designated as ‘lost’, which usually takes 15 years*.
Estatesearch’s Financial Asset Search takes a more proactive approach. Using your rights under the Data Protection Act (i.e. GDPR), we contact around 150 financial institutions and manage the responses for you. Uniquely, we ask for information regarding active accounts, as well as those which have been designated as lost/ dormant. The Financial Institutions we contact include banks and building societies, but also extend to insurance and pension providers for a complete picture.
Accessible through your IFA or Will Writer , the search costs £185 (incl. VAT) and takes 30 working days to complete. In order to trigger the search, we undertake identity checks with Yoti (which is a name trusted by organisations from the Post Office, to Co-op to the NHS) which are like those you would do to open an online bank account and which take about 2 minutes.
Estatesearch is trusted by more than 1,500 law firms to assist their bereaved and vulnerable clients to quickly and carefully build a picture of a loved one’s financial affairs. We send hundreds of thousands of notices of death and loss of capacity to financial institutions every month.
Why not ask your IFA or Estate Planner to order a search for you today? It’s easy for them to register for an account and we don’t charge any subscription fees.