Are you sure you know about all of your investments that you and your family have held in your lifetime? None you may have forgotten? You may be entitled to some of the £50 billion of lost assets. Most of these will probably never be claimed. What an awful waste of money.
I have been aware of this for the last 20 years. The brilliant article by Claer Barrett points out that 20 million people have lost touch with financial providers over many, many years. This includes £37 billion in unclaimed pension assets, £4.5 billion in bank and building society accounts. £ 2.8 billion of assets held by wealth managers, £2 billion worth in lost shareholdings and £2 billion of life cover and long-term saving policies. Plus there is the massive sum never reclaimed in National Savings.
Who has the incentive to help us find this money? It belongs to us? It seems there is hardly a big incentive to help us from the financial providers.
I recall writing an article on the subject probably 20 years ago along the same lines. Not much has changed except the lost assets are substantially greater. Years ago when writing an article on this subject it got me thinking about my own assets. Had I forgotten any? This led me to thinking more about my own past investments and I vaguely recalled that I had put in place a Section 32 Buyout Policy probably 20 years earlier. I wondered what had happened to that. After my research which took some time I found the original provider had been acquired by another life company and I was delighted to find a then current value of £80,000 in this particular policy.
We should all keep a proper record of all assets and ensure that our family know where to find them and who to contact if we are not around. We have developed a brief document to help along the lines of “What I own and where it is kept,” which helps people document all their assets and the details of all the advisors including lawyers and accountants, banks, investment companies, National Savings, pension plans and so on.
The option to track down our assets is likely to become more difficult and it is crazy to think that we may have to rely on our memory alone.
Experian unclaimed assets register is due to close at the end of August this year as it is no longer a priority to the main business. Fortunately, there are still providers who can help us track down lost assets. One new provider is in the process of persuading more financial institutions to sign up to the Search programme. It has already matched £2 billion of lost assets.
The Search market can be difficult for consumers to navigate.
There is UK Finance where you can try to trace lost bank accounts. The Association of British Insurers has a list on its website showing pension companies that have merged. It is still down to you to search. The Investment Association has an “unclaimed asset portal.”
I feel strongly that we must do more to help people trace their lost assets.
Trevor Downing FPMI FPFS
