Asset searching was engineered as an innovative technique to modernise estate administration and to assemble the assets which are owed to a deceased’s estate during probate.
In our previous blogs we have spoken about why deceased individuals may have lost assets in their accounts, but there is often confusion over the type of assets which are investigated during a search.
The intention of asset searching is to uncover the deceased’s complete financial history, including any lost, (“gone aways”, which will include many deceased accounts), dormant, (accounts in which there has been no activity for more than 6 months) or active accounts, as well as a myriad of other asset types. Therefore, a search would be ineffective if it did not aim to examine the full scope of financial institutions, to discover if they held a financial relationship with the deceased.
A successful asset searching engine will query over 200 financial institutions, (up to 350 different databases connected to each of those), for each deceased individual. This is to ensure that there has been a thorough investigation into the deceased’s estate and that no financial stone has been left unturned. The wide array of financial institutions contacted include the following:
- Banks
- Building societies
- Personal pensions
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Investments
- Life assurances
- Shares
- National Savings & Investments
By searching the extensive list of financial institutions reached in this way, probate professionals can drastically reduce the workload they would undertake in uncovering the accounts and policies which belonged to the deceased. The resulting financial asset report will help to maximise the estate value and benefit the beneficiaries when the estate is distributed.
As such, we are seeing more and more probate professionals adopt the best practice policy of conducting a financial asset search in every probate case, as soon as they are instructed, in order to adequately assess the value of the estate and then apply for a grant of probate.
At Inheritance Data we work with some of the largest estate administrators in the industry as well as many probate solicitors and other probate professionals in the UK who have reaped the benefits of our bespoke Inheritance Data Financial Asset Search.
With a staggering 90% of searches uncovering a lost asset, can you afford not to conduct an asset search for your clients?
If you work within probate or estate administration and you would you like to discover more about how financial asset searching can help you, please contact Emma Baddaley at emma@inheritancedata.com or call directly for a discussion on 07729 228668.
Emma Baddaley | Inheritance Data.
This article was submitted to be published by Inheritance Data as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Wills and Probate. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Wills and Probate
