The Unclaimed Assets Register (UAR) from Experian assists in the recovery of lost financial assets. It is estimated that over £15 billion of financial assets lie unclaimed in accounts of UK financial institutions. To date the UAR has helped reunite over £6 million with its rightful owners and carried out over 12,000 searches. The UAR is an electronic database of unclaimed assets, which may be searched by members of the public or their legal representatives. Most insurance companies - for life and personal pensions – participate as well as many occupational schemes, unit trusts and open ended investment companies, friendly societies and listed companies for dividends and windfall shares A search can be initiated easily either online or by telephoning the above number for a search request form. The cost is £18 (including VAT) and 10% of the public search fee is donated to charity. No financial data is held on the register, only names, addresses and date of birth. An individual requesting a search is asked to provide their current and past names and addresses and date of birth, which are electronically compared with the base information held. Where a potential match occurs, the searcher will be put in contact with the appropriate institution, which will carry out its usual verification procedures In the main, people have become detached from their assets due to their own failure to notify organisations of a change of address through laziness, forgetfulness or ignorance. but there are many other more compelling reasons such as serious illness old age and death . The situation is not helped by the dramatic rise in share ownership following privatisations, demutualisations and the subsequent establishment of a plethora of online share dealing facilities, encouraging those perhaps not familiar with the system to invest. Natural disasters such as fire or flood, of course, can cruelly play their part in destroying vital information The UAR uses latest technology to facilitate rapid and comprehensive searches even catering for individuals who have no paper work and no real idea of the company with which they invested.