In the UK, Halifax bank is putting out press releases to announce the number of customers - previously considered "untraceable" - who have now been found. Like other members of the UK banking industry, they are undertaking this tracing exercise in advance of expected new legislation that may move the control of funds in dormant accounts from the banks to the government.

The question that comes to mind is: if they can find so many missing customers so quickly, why have they not done it before?

As ever, they will only manage to trace those people whom professional genealogists would regard as relatively easy to trace. That is because, as reported in the news item below, the average account value is only about £2,300. So we can all do the sums, and work out roughly how much the bank would be willing - on average - to spend on tracing these clients.

The more difficult cases, that may require several years of painstaking research, and may involve work across different continents, are likely to remain unsolved. The rightful owners of the dormant accounts may never get to hear of their entitlements.

It is the more difficult type of cases that TPR and its associates normally get to work on. A few cases are brought to us by prospective clients. More generally, we discover potential cases by processing large volumes of publicly available data, and filtering out those items where it seems a legitimate owner has gone missing for a long time. Then, the genealogists start their work: tracing the individual or his family, anywhere in the world.

It's a shame that UK banks are still reticent to allow commission-based researchers such as TPR to assist on the harder cases that they have in their files. Without such an arrangement, these cases are likely to remain unsolved.

Maybe one day the banks will change their policy. Meanwhile, read the original story HERE.

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