The UK Probate Service has been struggling with a huge backlog of cases since 2023, with the average time to process probate applications rising to 24 weeks, and in some cases 30 weeks.
Equiniti receives 250,000 notifications of death annually through its core services, making it the single largest organisation for bereavement contacts in the UK. As one of the UK’s leading probate providers, it sees the impact of these delays on its customers first hand and was asked to give evidence to the Justice Committee in April 2024 about its experiences with the system.
An Equiniti spokesperson told how Probate delays have left some clients feeling suicidal because they are running out of money:
“We have seen people where the main income earner has passed away who cannot receive the funds they need to live on because they are locked up in probate.”
Evidence-givers, Equiniti and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), agreed that minimum service standards should be imposed on the Probate Service, an idea put forward by the Law Society, and that outsourcing should be used to bring in experienced probate staff, as proposed by STEP.
But this is just one of the issues that exist around dealing with death administration. The average constituent must make repeat contacts to on average 21 different businesses, after the death of a family member or friend.
The Death Notification Service (DNS) is a free service set up to address this, which allows you to notify a number of member organisations of a person's death, at the same time – mirroring the Government’s ‘tell us once’ service but in the private sector.
Originally created in partnership with UK Finance and the major UK banks, the service has now been successfully utilised to make almost 600,000 notifications for partner members. The DNS has delivered significant improvements for customers and businesses when dealing with death notifications, reducing the time taken to make notifications whilst lessening the emotional impact of repeat difficult conversations for customers. There is also a significant time saving and reduction in administration given that the service also validates the death and identity of the notifier as part of the process.
Feedback from users of the service is always based around the need for the insurance, utilities and telecom sectors to follow the banks in allowing them to use the DNS to make death notifications.
The recent multi-firm review by the FCA into how life providers deal with claims, found that firms took on average between 53 and 122 days to process a term insurance policy claim, from start to finish. The DNS has the ability to have a significant impact in not just reducing this but also the cost associated with processing claims.
The DNS has changed the way banks deal with death notifications. Equiniti continues to challenge other sectors to follow suit and allow their customers to use the service.
Read all this and more in the Purpose Coalition Breaking Down Barriers Magazine [pages 34-35].