By Andy Davies, FI Relationship Manager, Estatetrace
Magnum PI has made the world of private investigation a glamourous and exciting role! When asked what they’d like to be when they grow up, I think children these days may even say they’d like to be a rocket scientist, a pilot, or a PI.
When I first started working at Estatetrace I didn’t realise how close some of our processes would come to that of a private investigator. The main purpose of Estatetrace provides effective solutions to assist the financial services industry in tracking down goneaway customers or the representatives of deceased account holders to prevent assets becoming lost in the system. We build desktop investigations by narrowing down available data points relating to the customer, and industrialise this process for Financial Institutions who are looking for their goneaway customers. Each subject/customer will undergo their own individual investigation to discover their correct address, or to see if they have passed away. In this way, we enable financial institutions to re-engage with customers or their families.
Estatetrace’s Mission in Customer Reconnection
All of the customers we search for will have accounts, pensions, or insurance policies where funds need to be repatriated. It is incredibly rewarding to hear how our financial services clients have received notes, cards, and even flowers to thank them when people, sometimes relatives of deceased account holders, have been reunited with funds that were rightfully theirs, that they never knew existed. Although it can feel a step removed that we are not recognised by the beneficiary of the account here, (the customer doesn’t know we exist) we recognise that it is our actions that have led to this positive outcome, and we enjoy being able to highlight our clients’ work, who ultimately keep our lights on.
There was one case in Guernsey where we were investigating a ‘goneaway’ customer. As is often the case, we simply had the name and date of birth and an old address, but we didn’t know if this information was still accurate. We use various data sources including open-source intelligence to verify information we believe is correct and this can include things like newspaper reports. We discovered the address we were looking for had been destroyed during the war and the residents evacuated to the UK mainland.
Although the original account holders had passed away in the interim, we were able to track down the Executor of the Estate belonging to the deceased. They had no knowledge of the policy and so the financial institution we were working for was able to pass the funds on to the Executor to ensure the beneficiaries of the Estate received what was rightfully theirs. Often, it’s not only the Executor who doesn’t know about the account in question, sometimes the account holder has forgotten about the account ahead of their death – hence the age of the address (we knew in this case that the address held by the institution pre-dated the end of the war). It is reasonable therefore to assume this account would have never been repatriated without the Financial Institution taking action.
Tracking Down Goneaway Customers
Often, we are given a book of customer records where there has been no activity on the accounts for multiple years, and this can vary wildly between a few years and many decades. We frequently identify deaths which are much closer to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II than King Charles III, showing how many years have passed since the institution last had positive contact from their goneaway customer. This is often exacerbated by mergers and acquisitions.
In some cases, historic addresses can be matched to details on the 1939 Register, again this indicates that the customer is likely elderly or already passed and so we are often looking for Next of Kin or Executors to help financial institutions repatriate funds with relatives.
In historic cases we can also use passenger records, and naturalisation documents, to track people’s movements. They have been a particularly rich source of information as addresses used to be recorded on the documents. We have, for example, been able to track several Russian Jews escaping persecution before the war, coming through the UK and onto the USA to help ensure their families were re-united with the wealth held in their bank accounts, even though many years had passed.
Because we mix automation with human intervention, our success rate for tracing goneaways is high – up to 90%. And the rate at which we can progress this work generally falls in line with our clients’ available resource to comfortably manage re-engagement.
It’s great karma to have happy customers reunited with accounts and funds. Often an unexpected windfall is used to pay for a job on the house, or to fix the car, so money that has lay dormant in accounts for many years is ploughed back into the economy. The financial institutions’ customers are always happy and we are pleased to help shine that light on them for doing the right thing by tracing their goneaway customers. None of our team is Magnum PI, but we do sleep pretty well at night!