Claiming your assets: At what cost?

By Jessica Dunbar
BBC Radio 4's Money Box

TPR UK charges a finder's fee

What would you do if you received a letter offering to reunite you with a property you never knew you had?

Money Box investigated a firm that makes money out of unclaimed assets.

Money Box listener Margaret was surprised - and a little suspicious - when out of the blue she received a letter telling her she had been identified as the beneficiary of some unclaimed property.

It is like somebody is dangling a carrot in front of you. Margaret

Margaret had no idea what this could be and was curious to find out more.

The letter had been sent to her by a company called TPR UK. It is one of a number of firms operating in the UK which offers this kind of service.

Firstly, the company searches for unclaimed assets by buying information from public records, and then it traces the people it identifies as having a claim.

Fee agreement

However, in order for Margaret to find out any more, she first had to sign a fee agreement which TPR UK had also sent.

This agreement stipulated that Margaret must pay the firm two fifths, or 40%, of whatever she was due. Margaret was not happy about signing. She told the programme:

"It is like somebody is dangling a carrot in front of you, and saying: I know something you do not know, and I am not going to tell you unless you pay me two fifths of what it is worth. If there is something there, I think they should tell you."

TPR UK's Director Alex Di Capua told Money Box that his firm cannot reveal to people exactly what the unclaimed property is because otherwise it might miss out on its finder's fee, as people would simply claim the property themselves.

We do not try to force anyone to sign up at 40%. We are happy to listen and we have lowered our fee sometimes TPR UK Director Alex Di Capua

And he added that the firm needed to charge 40% of the asset value in order to make a profit because the majority of unclaimed property it identifies tends to be of smaller value amounts.

But Mr Di Capua did admit that the company is prepared to tell people how much the outstanding asset is worth, and that they would also be prepared to negotiate on the fee:

He said: "We do not try to force anyone to sign up at 40%. We are happy to listen and we have lowered our fee sometimes. So on a case-to-case basis we are happy to discuss."

This is worth remembering because as the asset belongs to a specific individual, TPR UK cannot offer it to anyone else, and therefore it needs to reach an agreement in order to earn anything.

Other ways to trace assets

The Unclaimed Assets Register enables anyone to search its database for a fixed fee of £18, although normally you can only carry out this search for assets registered against your own name.

The register's Managing Director Keith Hollender says it gets calls almost every day from people who have received letters like Margaret's.

He said: "We say to them, we may be able to help because we have a very large database and it is quite possible it may appear on that database.

"On the other hand, the chances are that that particular thing which has been found by the company is probably a share holding, and they should go back through their records to check, and if they can locate something they should follow that up with the relevant registrar."

Margaret is currently trying to contact TPR UK for further details on her claim before deciding what to do next.

BBC Radio 4's Money Box was broadcast on Saturday, 10 January, 2004, and was repeated on Sunday, 11 December, 2004 at 2102 GMT.