Your efforts can help reunite people with the benefits their loved ones worked hard to secure for them.
Finding missing beneficiaries can be an overwhelming task, especially if there are several missing beneficiary searches to complete at once. It’s also time-consuming to conduct search efforts and document the steps you’ve taken to prove you’ve done your due diligence.
Free tools like search engines, social media platforms, and public records can only get you so far. When these basic tools fail, you’ll likely find yourself paying for additional resources with no guarantee of results. This approach wastes time, increases costs, and often leaves beneficiaries still missing.
Why Beneficiary Searches Get More Complex Every Year
The challenge of locating missing beneficiaries gets more complex as time passes. People move, employees change jobs, organizations merge, account holders pass away without informing their families about their existing benefits, data sources become less reliable, and organizations simply do not have the time to keep all their contact information updated.
Incorrect or missing beneficiary information can make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to locate the missing beneficiary.
Our Approach to Finding Missing Beneficiaries
Gather Information
First, we analyze the information you already have. This may include full name, last known address, date of birth, social security number, and other data points. It isn’t uncommon for organizations to realize the beneficiary information they have is incomplete, missing, or outdated.
Then, we expand the search to find the latest information on the spouse (if one) and potential first-degree relatives. Our team uses cutting-edge technology, comprehensive databases, investigative techniques, public records, digital platforms, and more to gather all the available information that basic searches overlook.
Compare Data
Next, we compare all the data. Every lookup for a beneficiary is different. You may have the full legal name, but an outdated address. You may have a partial social security number, but the individual got married, so their last name changed. Our experts systematically compare and cross-reference all available information to build a complete picture.
Validate Findings
We use resources like marriage and divorce certificates, death records, and other sources to confirm our findings. This is often easier said than done. Once we have confirmation on a certain number of data points, we can report results to our clients with confidence.
Complete Documentation
Throughout the entire process, we document every step and provide a detailed report to our clients. This allows our clients to quickly update their systems and provide thorough documentation to demonstrate they have made a good faith effort to locate a beneficiary.
The Human Impact of Beneficiary Searches
Reconnecting funds and benefits with a beneficiary can be life changing. We have heard hundreds of stories. In a recent webinar Solving the Beneficiary Puzzle, we shared a story about how Berwyn experts were able to track down a beneficiary when there was no beneficiary information on file. This resulted in an individual receiving a substantial benefit that was owed to her. Because of this, she was able to make a generous contribution to a charitable organization that benefited children across the world.
Expert Results You Can Count On
The Berwyn team completed over 20,000 beneficiary searches in 2024 alone. Our BeneSearch® solution has an 80% success rate at finding a spouse and a 95% success rate at finding first-degree relative(s).
Rather than spending valuable time on complex searches that may not yield results, you can focus on other critical initiatives while we handle the detective work.
For more information on identifying beneficiaries within your population, contact us today. We work with insurance companies, pensions, TPAs, healthcare organizations, financial services firms and more across the United States.
