Often when reviewing outstanding loan books, either for the purposes of recovery or sale of same, many creditors find that they have a high concentration of exposures in specific areas. These reviews can identify a significant underestimation of the extent to which these customers were borrowing from the other lenders.
These reviews can also identify a high volume of personally guaranteed loans which are not always supported by verification of the personal wealth of the guarantor and in some instances these guarantees have proven to be far less valuable than presumed.
As part of the recovery process, these creditors, mainly banks and lending institutions, seek a comprehensive review of current and recently disposed of assets of the relevant individual(s).
Our team of Forensic Accountants have worked with banks and other creditors to identify assets that may have been sold, transferred, undervalued or undisclosed to the bank by a borrower in an attempt to defeat any potential claim against same. We also assist in the assessment and validation of a borrower’s Statement of Affairs by utilising our Corporate Intelligence and Asset Identification techniques. In addition, our asset tracing experts assist with fraud investigations and can add significant value to such projects.
In order to trace and identify an individuals or an organisation’s assets, searches are performed across publically available information using sophisticated search tools. This process provides assistance to clients in the following circumstances;
We provide asset tracing services to clients seeking to trace the assets of an individual or corporate entity for the purposes of recovery.
We perform detailed searches of publicly available information, both from a corporate and a property perspective to enable us to locate any relevant assets that may assist our client with their proceedings.
These searches include, but are not limited to, Land Registry searches, Registry of Deeds searches, company filing reviews, financial statement reviews, beneficial ownership review, judgment searches, statement of affairs review, media searches, and social media searches.
We have a team of specialist Forensic Accountants, property specialists and investigators with extensive experience in tracing assets. We have successfully acted for clients in obtaining worldwide freezing orders on foot of our reports.
We assist in the recovery of misappropriated assets across various jurisdictions including Cayman Islands, USA, Canada, UK, Europe, South Africa and UAE. This is made possible thanks to our global presence, in which we have experts located in Grant Thornton offices throughout the world who we collaborate with to achieve the best results for our clients.
