Wednesday 26 June 2013

Footballers Missing Millions

By Gerard Faulds

A recent report from the footballers’ charity Xpro believes that as many as 8,000 former players have forgotten pensions, including a well-known player who has £500,000 in a pension he didn't even know existed.   Almost anyone can lose track of their financial assets - it is estimated that over £10 billion of accounts, plans and policies have been forgotten or overlooked when an estate has been distributed.

Since the launch of Landmark’s ground-breaking Financial Asset Search (FAS) service in 2009, we have helped probate professionals to identify potentially huge sums of money belonging to the estate which had become lost or forgotten. Frequently, life policies and pension plans are identified where it is possible that the deceased was not aware that they even existed.

There are lots of reasons for this. In the case of life policies, around a third of all policies are purchased with a single premium,  meaning that reviewing bank statements some years later will not identify the existence of the policy as there are no regular premiums. What if the deceased purchased a single premium life policy was many years ago - how would you identify its existence if the paperwork was missing?

A Landmark Financial Asset Search (FAS) looks for these types of financial assets - those which are lost or forgotten. We contact over 200 financial institutions giving you confidence that the entire estate has been identified for distribution to the beneficiaries.

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