If tracking down a long-lost inheritance from a far corner of the globe sounds like a great idea, you will be intrigued to learn about the work of Worthington Clark, an Australian-based genealogy and asset research firm.
Originally founded in 1981 in Sydney NSW, the company first started offering “probate genealogy” as a service, tracing the heirs and beneficiaries of deceased individuals.
Today, Worthington Clark employs over 30 staff globally “assisting individuals and businesses to locate and reconnect with lost or unknown people, property, and assets.”
“It’s actually very exciting work!” says Ewen McMurchy, Chief Data Officer for Worthington Clark; “We’re actively monitoring more than $2.5 trillion worth of assets – of which an estimated $10 billion are lost or unclaimed – and every year we return over $50 million of lost or unclaimed assets to thousands of customers across the world.”
This could include estate assets that haven’t been administered correctly, forgotten employee share plans from prior employers, or simply that the management of an asset has been messed up somewhere along the line.
“Our job is to find those assets, find the people that they’re connected to, and then hopefully reunite them – and that can be painstaking detective work.” says Ewen.
A significant investment in data quality technology
In July 2023, Worthington Clark was acquired by several investors including CEO, Simon Bligh. As part of the acquisition, a significant investment was made into the firm’s data and technology processes to help increase impact and serve more customers.
Some of that tech investment included introducing the services of Intech Solutions to enhance Worthington Clark’s investigative capabilities – specifically, their address validation, auto-complete, and geocoding services.
“Identifying rightful heirs, beneficiaries and next of kin can be quite challenging, especially because Australia is very multicultural with so many people who were born overseas,” says Ewen.
“If, for example, someone has moved here from overseas and they have no children, then we may have to contact people in the country of their birth and try to find birth certificates there, and then possibly find their parents’ marriage certificate located somewhere else in the world.
“There are often remarkable stories and places that we need to follow up on in order to work out who the rightful owners of assets are, and the time it takes to do this can vary significantly,” he says.
“If we’re looking for a ‘John Smith’ in the UK, that will likely be difficult – but if we’re looking for an unusual name like ‘Ewen McMurchy’, it’ll likely be easier, as I’m pretty sure there’s only one of me in the world!”
Address validation – a crucial step in contacting people who are owed money
A significant amount of Worthington Clark’s initial outreach to customers is done through letters.
“Addresses make up 50% of the initial data we have, so address quality is crucial,” says Ewen. “We’ll often find addresses are corrupted, and if they’re foreign addresses, they’re often poorly formatted, which is usually the reason why the assets have been lost in the first place. Being able to clean and standardise those addresses is vital.”
Before starting with Intech, Worthington Clark didn’t have an automated address validation solution. Previously, all the firm’s data was inputted manually, which
Today, Intech’s solutions are fully embedded within their CRM system, Nebula.
“Basically, every address that is entered into our system is run through Intech’s service, and everyone, from our data and research team, through to our sales, and client services teams use it to find the addresses they need.
“We send thousands of letters all around the world every year, so by reducing address quality issues that lead to ‘Return to Senders’, that obviously reduces our costs.”
Sometimes though, a letter isn’t enough, and Worthington Clark’s researchers need to identify a physical location of a potential beneficiary.
“We sometimes deal with customers who would like a personal visit. Intech’s geocoding tools enable us to visually see where those customers are on a map, so we can go to where they are and help them fill out the documentation, often with their own trusted advisors.”
“This has been quite valuable for our work, because once we’ve got a proper address with the latitude and longitude, we can attach public data sets to it and identify where they are and how we can best support them.”
The life-changing moments resulting from finally being ‘found’
Ewen shares one of his favourite stories of reconnecting a customer with lost funds.
“This customer was a career cab driver in Victoria who was the beneficiary of shares and dividends from an estate about 15 years ago. However, there was an address error in the original letter sent to him by the estate administrator, meaning the letter had never reached him and he was unaware of the assets.
“Our research team identified the assets and the beneficiary, and using Intech’s tools, we found the correct address and uncovered the address issue which had led to the assets becoming lost.
“We managed to recoup just over $100,000 for him, which was a life-changer for both him and his partner – so it’s very satisfying to help people in this way.”
Reducing ‘Return to Sender’ rates
Since using Intech Solutions’ address validation services, Ewen says address quality has improved substantially and ‘Return to Sender’ (RTS) volumes have dramatically reduced.
“Before we signed with Intech, we were getting a high volume of RTS for just simple addressing issues. Today, it’s basically non-existent,” he says.
“We mostly monitor Australian assets for individuals who could be anywhere in the world. We’ve got a lot of customers in the UK, the US, Fiji, and New Zealand, so being able to get accurate data on those countries and others where we don’t necessarily have local knowledge is very important.
“The cost of sending letters internationally can be quite high, so there’s an immediate cost-saving in being able to ensure that we don’t get the RTS from those letters.”
After more than 40 years in business, and with Intech’s tools helping Worthington Clark to enhance their data and reunite more people and assets, they are now looking forward to the next step of their data journey.
The Address Validation and Geocoding components at the heart of Intech Solutions’ location intelligence tools are the product of years of dedicated software development. Get in touch with Intech today for a demonstration of what Intech’s solutions can do for your business.