An Island asset recovery firm has signed up with a Cayman-based company to recover millions of dollars in unclaimed financial assets owned by Bermuda residents from around the globe.

Hamilton-based Krys Global has teamed up with AssetMine Global to track down the legal owners of property and cash.

And Krys Global’s managing director Mathew Clingerman said the partnership had already identified more than 1,000 Bermuda residents who could benefit from making a claim.

Mr Clingerman said: “We are excited about this initiative and the value it can bring to Bermuda residents, companies and the Government.

“We are assisting clients in locating assets that in most cases they never knew existed.”

Unclaimed assets include dormant bank accounts, tax refunds, uncashed cheques, insurance and pension policies as well as stocks, brokerage accounts and inheritances.

Mr Clingerman said: “We have begun our first phase of contacting those who we believe to be owners of unclaimed assets that have been identified by AssetMine.”

He added: “Our team uses a multi-stage research process into publicly-available databases across the world, which include cross references at every step to eliminate non-owners.

“We are contacting only those whom we consider likely to be the rightful or legal asset owner.”

Mr Clingerman explained that many governments list unclaimed assets as “not stated” values, so the total amount of unclaimed cash and property belonging to Bermuda owners was hard to estimate — but that AssetMine had estimated the figures were growing.

AssetMine’s Darren Jack, who is also chairman of an Unclaimed Property Professionals Organisation task force, said: “The unclaimed assets that do actually have a known value for Bermuda residents and companies is in the millions of US dollars, so we can only imagine what the ‘non stated’ values are.

“Our experience in other countries indicates that a significant number of these unclaimed assets could have significant value.”

Mr Clingerman said cash and property legally owned by Island residents had bee traced in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

He added that assets could go missing due to a change of address, incorrect spelling of contact information, people dying without leaving a will or beneficiary details not being kept up to date, as well as failure to deposit cheques into an account.

Mr Clingerman said that the partnership with the Caymans group meant access to around 100 million records and unclaimed assets totalling $50 billion around the world.

He added: “We’re doing this in Bermuda, but we’re also launching this in several offshore jurisdictions. We’re launching the same kind of programme across the Caribbean.”

And he said: “We’re exploring different arrangements, but traditionally we’re working on a success-based fee — typically, it’s about 20 percent.”

And he stressed that — unlike many scam e-mails offering a share of a fortune — the scheme was legal and above board.

He said: “This is a legitimate programme — we’re not asking people to send us money.”

Mr Clingerman added: “People can also call us up and ask us to check things for them — it’s not a problem to do that.”