Abandoned and Unclaimed Property

Voluntary Disclosure Agreement Services

Clients benefit from a suite of services that can assist with all aspects of an unclaimed property voluntary disclosure program, including the identification, quantification, and remediation of previously unreported abandoned and unclaimed property obligations, as well as negotiations with the appropriate jurisdictional officials to mitigate interest, penalties, and amounts owed. Clients find significant value through the execution of closing agreements, limitation of review periods, and the abatement of interest and/or penalties associated with prior unreported abandoned property and unclaimed property.

With advanced experience in data extraction, sampling, estimation, and extrapolation techniques, you are provided with a means of confidentiality advancing voluntary disclosure agreements with reporting jurisdictions. By performing due diligence and locating owners of presumed abandoned and unclaimed property, our clients reduce the risk of interest and penalties while enhancing their reputation with customers and vendors.

Compliance Outsourcing Services

Clients gain added value with a dedicated team of Abandoned and Unclaimed Property professionals who specialize in outsourcing and compliance services that analyze raw data to determine unclaimed funds by state, as well as which items are reportable and to what states. Using that raw data, you are provided with a number of services, including:

• Preparation of the annual unclaimed property reports in the required format necessary for each state
• Creation, mailing, and response tracking of statutory due diligence letters
• Identification of potential exclusions, including statutory business-to-business exemptions, de minimis payroll exemptions, duplicate items, and available deductions
• Preparation of payments to the various jurisdictions

Abandoned and Unclaimed Property Software

Tracker PRO Unclaimed Property software is the nation’s leading unclaimed property technology application. Tracker PRO is a comprehensive, user-friendly application that consolidates abandoned property records from multiple sources across your enterprise, simplifying your compliance with due diligence requirements, and generating all the necessary statutory reports for state filing purposes. Thousands of companies rely on the application to stay in compliance, and it can be installed on your network or used over the Internet as a hosted application (SaaS).

Read more about Tracker PRO

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Risk Assessment Services

The first critical step for any company seeking compliance with the abandoned and unclaimed property laws in each state is to perform a risk assessment.

Clients are assisted with performing two types of risk assessments: 

Qualitative Risk Assessment – Encompasses interviewing key employees and reviewing pertinent documents and records to review and assess your company’s existing unclaimed property environment. Subsequently, a comparison analysis is performed against best practices for your industry, and gaps are identified along with a remediation strategy.

Quantitative Risk Assessment – Involves performing a detailed, diagnostic review (Phase I) of the books and records of the company and estimating a high-level potential exposure calculation to help your company get a real sense of potential worst-case liability. Ryan can also work with you to research and remediate the items identified as potential unclaimed property to help mitigate the actual exposure (Phase II). Furthermore, Ryan has a dedicated team of statisticians, who can assist in developing statistical sampling methodologies to create a more streamlined and efficient research and remediation process.

Asset Recovery Services

The asset recovery process can be daunting. In many cases, substantial property or assets are not subject to reporting, making them difficult to identify. With Ryan’s asset recovery experts, clients gain a full-service solution, ensuring no asset is left behind. We manage the asset recovery claims process from start to finish.

Ryan’s comprehensive asset recovery services include:

• Filing claims with jurisdictions with required documents to get claims approved
• Assessing internal recovery vs. outsourcing
• Reviewing more than 2,000 often overlooked repositories, such as bankruptcy courts, counties, cities, state agencies, and federal agencies
• Identifying assets for current and historical entities, subsidiaries, acquisitions, and assumed and trademarked names
• Preparing claims, including following up with respective filing jurisdictions until approval and payment
• Ongoing reviews to identify newly reported assets
• Performance-based fees—if there is no asset recovery, the client pays Ryan no fee

Ryan’s dedicated asset recovery practice is focused on providing value for our client and reducing their administrative burden. Limited time is required of our client’s internal team, usually no more than 15 minutes each month. Unlike many of our competitors, Ryan does not require a Power of Attorney. All recoveries go directly to our client. Utilizing Ryan’s proprietary search engine, which is capable of identifying misspelled property names and searching by reported address, we are able to find more assets than an internal search or what another third party would yield.

Asset Reunification Services

Each year, more than 40 million people move to a new address. These individuals chance becoming displaced with their investments if they fail to update important account record information. For corporations, this creates risk associated with dormant accounts that are now subject to escheatment. As the holder of these liabilities, corporations face significant challenges retaining customer investments, reducing escheatment, and mitigating financial risk.

State regulators have a heightened sense of interest in escheatment opportunities. In recent years, unclaimed property has become a significant revenue source for state government. Audit activity has increased drastically as states look to fill budget deficits with revenue generated from unclaimed assets and abandoned property. The results can yield multimillion-dollar liability assessments or settlements.

Ryan’s Asset Reunification services can drastically reduce escheatment risk, while improving investor retention on dormant accounts. Our proactive Pre-Escheat Asset Reunification (PEAR) program employs thorough, in-depth research combined with professional outreach campaigns that deliver measurable, targeted results.

PEAR
Ryan’s PEAR program provides a robust outreach campaign that analyzes client files for missing account holder data, conducts in-depth research, and assists “Lost” account holders in claiming their assets. Our specialists work with the account holder in an effective and respectful manner, representing our client’s interests with a thorough approach. We explore the nature of the situation for each “Lost” account holder and determine the best course of action to achieve resolution.

Tracker PRO Software
Tracker PRO Unclaimed Property software is the nation’s leading unclaimed property technology application. Tracker PRO is a comprehensive, user-friendly application that consolidates abandoned property records from multiple sources across your enterprise, simplifying your compliance with due diligence requirements, and generating all the necessary statutory reports for state filing purposes. Thousands of companies rely on the application to stay in compliance, and it can be installed on your network or used over the internet as a hosted application (SaaS).

Policy and Procedure Services

Clients are assisted with the development of customized written policies and procedures and are provided in-house staff training to help them implement escheat reporting practices, along with identifying gaps while building a governance model for managing enterprise-wide unclaimed property responsibilities.

Some of the services that Ryan’s team can provide include:

• Defining roles and responsibilities regarding your company's unclaimed property compliance process
• Documenting the current unclaimed property process and identifying process improvements and best practices
• Assessing compliance options
• Drafting Unclaimed Property Corporate Governance Framework documents
• Providing in-house staff training as part of the implementation of the new procedures

Process and IT Review Services

Clients benefit from Ryan’s end-to-end Abandoned and Unclaimed Property solutions with assistance in reviewing existing internal controls and policies and procedures, both formal and informal, and identifying potential compliance gaps. Assistance is also provided by formulating an action plan for compliance so that you can begin a thorough review of books and records and ensure all property requiring escheatment is included in the annual compliance process.

Some of the tasks that may be utilized during the internal control review include:

• Conducting onsite interviews with the key functional area leaders (e.g., Accounts Payable, Payroll, Accounts Receivable, and Risk Management) to understand the past and present procedures to identify, capture, remediate, and report, on a consistent basis, transactions determined to be unclaimed property
• Assisting in the identification of other additional categories of potential unclaimed property based on the company’s operations
• Reviewing document record retention policies to determine whether they satisfy the various jurisdictions' requirements
• Determining whether processes are in place to identify legislative/administrative changes that affect the reporting process (e.g., change in dormancy periods and online filing requirements)
• Identifying the individual(s)/department(s) responsible for each step in the compliance process

At the conclusion of the internal control review, Ryan will provide management with a written summary of findings and recommendations.

Transactional Gift-Card Planning Services

Ryan's Abandoned and Unclaimed Property practice can help your company with strategic planning issues surrounding the design, implementation, and maintenance of your company’s gift certificate/card program.

Design Steps:

• Assess potential implementation components, including operational considerations, legal structure of the gift-card maintenance company (GCMC), jurisdiction of domicile or incorporation, and potential tax issues
• Research and discuss key issues and alternatives
• Evaluate operational considerations, including GCMC entity selection, flow of transactions and intercompany agreements, accounting and financial reporting implications, systems integration, and GCMC services

Implementation Steps:

• Form new entity/utilize existing entity
• Develop intercompany guidelines and pricing
• Identify and evaluate requisite filings with state agencies
• Develop state income/franchise tax filing positions
• Address business purpose and corporate substance considerations
• Integrate GCMC with overall business purpose and operations
• Work with legal counsel with regard to obtaining requisite legal documents
• Create report summary of implementation process methodology

Maintenance Steps:

• Analyze functioning of planning strategies and GCMC structure
• Develop plan enhancements in response to changes in unclaimed property and tax laws, corporate direction, and business environment
• Perform a strategy checkup six months after the date of structure implementation

Special Claims and Recovery Services

Ryan’s Special Claims and Recovery practice specializes in recovering settlement funds for our clients, primarily from Class Action settlements. Our team of knowledgeable and experienced professionals identifies pools of settlement funds and other recovery opportunities, files claims, works with the claims administrators, as required, and collects these funds on behalf of our clients.

At Ryan, we work hard to recover settlement funds for you. We monitor new settlements, match new and current settlements with our clients, and help our clients recover the maximum funds possible. Ryan will collect the required supporting data, prepare and file the claim forms, address inquiries from the claims administrators, keep you updated throughout the process, and collect the funds on your behalf.

As with many other Ryan services, the Special Claims and Recovery practice provides these services on a performance-fee basis.