The #1 financial risk that you might not be aware of
We all have financial fears related to insufficient savings for emergencies, not enough money for retirement, investment risks, etc.
But there is one big financial risk hiding around the corner, which might be bigger than any of these. This is the risk that your money and assets can be legally “stolen” after you’re gone, instead of reaching your family.
This is not an imaginary risk but a very real one. Currently, in the US alone, there are approximately $80 billion of so-called “unclaimed assets,” according to the New York Times, and the rate at which this amount is growing is alarming – approximately $5 billion per year! And this is the situation in the US alone. There are hardly any reliable statistics for unclaimed assets in the rest of the world, but if they are approaching $100 billion in the US, you can imagine the magnitude of the problem globally.
These are your hard-earned assets staying in someone else’s pocket, instead of reaching your family. How can that happen? There are a few reasons.
Reason 1: Complex and cross-country assets
These days, people have various asset types, such as bank accounts, insurance policies, stock options, company stocks, real estate, and RSUs. This is very different from half a century ago when most people had one or two asset types – a bank account and real estate, for example.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that these assets quite often reside in different countries – a reality familiar particularly to expats.
So having such cross-country, diverse, and complex assets makes it very difficult for your family even to identify them, never mind inherit them…
Reason 2: Most banks and asset management companies globally don’t have a legal obligation to trace heirs
Yes, that’s right. Many companies which hold your assets aren’t legally required to look for your heirs if anything happens to you. So if these companies don’t look for your heirs, and your heirs don’t know about these assets or where they are, how can they inherit them? You get the point – they probably won’t inherit them at all.
So what will happen to your assets?
In many cases, families do not know where to look for the assets and how to claim ownership, primarily due to the reasons discussed above – assets are in different countries, the family does not know in which asset management system or bank the assets are stored, the assets are complex, and the family doesn’t know how to claim them.
As a result, your money remains in the companies which store it, instead of reaching your family.
How can you ensure your assets will reach your family if anything happens to you?
DGLegacy is a service which ensures that in the event of your death, people whom you assign as beneficiaries will be informed about your assets so that they can identify the assets and claim ownership.
The service allows you to easily list your assets, such as bank accounts, insurances, company stock, stock options, and RSUs, and assign beneficiaries to them. You don’t enter any confidential information such as the amount of your money, the valuation of your stocks, keys or passwords – only general information about the assets which will allow your beneficiaries to find them.
And most importantly – the DGLegacy service has a custom-engineered HeartBeat protocol so that, in the event of your death, the beneficiaries will be informed about the assets so they can find the assets and claim ownership. The confirmation protocol is a safe procedure that includes email notifications and a phone call from a dedicated executive assistant to eliminate the possibility of false triggering of messages to your beneficiaries.
The service provides many additional features which can help you ensure that your family will inherit your assets. One such feature is the legal package, through which a representative from a renowned law firm will engage with each of your beneficiaries to guide and support them in the process of finding and claiming ownership of the assets.
With the DGLegacy service, you can find peace of mind – it ensures that your family will be informed about the assets if anything happens to you.
