With reports suggesting that up to £15 billion of unclaimed financial assets are present in bank accounts, pensions, life assurances and investments and almost half of UK adults confirming that they would not know how to find the details of a loved one’s total financial assets upon their death, the LandmarkFAS tracing service centralises the arduous task of locating current, lost or forgotten financial assets by enabling lawyers to input the person’s information just once.
As probate professionals, you will be aware of the time-consuming task of ensuring you’ve discovered all the assets – this can sometimes feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Whilst some evidence may be found with a search of the deceased’s home or family paperwork, how do you know that you have identified all of the assets?
You may have to undertake multiple searches to try and discover any missing assets – e.g. writing to individual banks, building societies and pension funds directly to request this information.
LandmarkFAS searches over 200 financial institutions in one order, including the Experian Unclaimed Asset Register, and identifies personal pensions, life policies, occupational pensions, unit trusts, investment trusts, investment bonds, National Savings & Investments, building societies and banks dormant accounts, FTSE100 shares; also wills registered with the officially-recognised national wills register.
The LandmarkFAS also incorporates Experian CAIS (Consumer credit Account Information Sharing) data as part of this service. This means that LandmarkFAS now supports the reconciliation of both active and inactive assets and debts, in one combined report, saving significant time and money for probate teams; all from one single order.
Caroline Alexander, Senior Associate (FCILEx), Michelmores LLP has been using LandmarkFAS service for many years and is enthusiastic about the report: “The fact that LandmarkFAS now includes details on active and inactive assets and debts is transformative for legal professionals. It gives me confidence that I have full coverage regarding the deceased’s financial affairs, without having to sift through mountains of paperwork. It covers everything we need to progress with probate and, in my view, is a critical service that I wouldn’t be without.”
Philip Hill, Channel Partner (Legal), Landmark Information Group said, “In today’s world, where people don’t necessarily keep paper records of their financial affairs, our LandmarkFAS service greatly supports probate professionals in uncovering credit and debt against a deceased person; removing the need for time-consuming manual investigations. Probate professionals have a number of important obligations to fulfil, whether they are acting as an executor to a will or assisting the personal representations. Our LandmarkFAS service gives confidence to legal professionals and their clients that thorough due diligence has taken place to support the process of administering a deceased person’s estate.”
LandmarkFAS Benefits
- Offers peace of mind to solicitors and their clients when they are settling the affairs of a deceased person’s estate whilst providing complete due diligence.
- Multiple searches through a single request.
- Eliminates the need to write to individual banks and pension funds directly.
- Reduces the risk of fraud by providing a notification of death to financial institutions.
- Protects solicitor, client and the beneficiaries from liability.
- Fixed fee search that does not take a percentage of funds you recover.
- Complies with the estate administration banking protocol.
To find out more, join our webinar with Landmark on Tuesday 15 June at 11am ‘Financial Asset Search – What happens to unclaimed Assets?’ Register here or see our Events page for further info.
