What an Asset Search Can and Cannot Tell You

Now the question every client asks: can you find their bank accounts and balances? The honest answer, from any legitimate investigator, is no. There is no lawful private route to another person's banking data. Obtaining it by deception, blagging the bank, impersonating the customer, buying leaked data, is a criminal offence under section 170 of the Data Protection Act 2018, and it taints everything it touches: the evidence, the instructing solicitor, the claim itself.

Any supplier who promises bank balances, statements or account numbers for a fee is offering to commit a crime on your behalf. Treat the promise as a due diligence failure in itself.

What the law provides instead are court routes at the right stage: an order to attend court for questioning under CPR Part 71 compels a judgment debtor to disclose their accounts on oath; Bankers Trust and Norwich Pharmacal orders can compel banks to disclose information in fraud claims; and a freezing order carries disclosure obligations of its own. A good asset report positions you to use those tools, identifying the likely banks from charges, court papers and payment references, without ever crossing the line.

Banking is not the only forbidden fruit. The same section 170 offence covers obtaining phone records, medical information, HMRC data and similar controlled information by deception or unauthorised access. Historic prosecutions of the blagging industry made exactly this point, and the courts have no patience for laundering such material through an agent.

Self-help by clients carries its own trap. In Imerman v Tchenguiz the Court of Appeal made clear that secretly copying a spouse's confidential documents, even in anticipation of proceedings, is unlawful, and the material can be ordered back rather than deployed. The instinct to photograph the paperwork in the home office is understandable and legally toxic.

The practical rule for instructing solicitors is simple: ask any asset tracing supplier to state their sources in the report. Lawful findings survive that question comfortably. Findings that arrive sourceless, suspiciously specific, bank balances, call logs, should set off every alarm you have.

A report is a starting position, not a valuation. The professionals' habits when reading one:

• Net, not gross. A £600,000 house with £550,000 of registered charges is £50,000 of equity, before costs of sale. Always read the charges register against the headline.
• Joint ownership halves things. Property held jointly generally exposes only the debtor's beneficial share, and a charging order bites on that share alone.
• Watch the dates. Transfers to a spouse or newco shortly after the debt arose are potential transactions defrauding creditors under section 423 of the Insolvency Act 1986, a finding worth its own advice note.
• Filed is not true. Company accounts and confirmation statements are self-reported; treat them as claims to test, not facts.
• Absence is information. A subject with no footprint at all may be judgment-proof, or may be living through vehicles a deeper phase of work would surface.

The best reports do this analysis for you, stating confidence levels and flagging the anomalies. If yours reads like a data dump, you bought the wrong product.

Post-judgment, the report becomes a targeting document, because each asset class has its own enforcement tool. Registered property maps to a charging order, and where the equity justifies it, an order for sale. Trade debtors and identifiable receivables map to third party debt orders. Employment income maps to an attachment of earnings order. Goods, vehicles and plant map to a writ of control executed by High Court Enforcement Officers, who take a keen interest in knowing in advance what is at the premises.

Sequencing matters as much as selection. A charging order secures quietly; a writ of control announces itself loudly and can trigger asset movement. The report's picture of what exists, where, and how liquid it is, is what lets you order the steps deliberately rather than alphabetically.

Where the report suggests concealment rather than absence, the escalation path runs through the court routes from section six, Part 71 questioning with the report as your cross-examination brief is a genuinely underused combination, and, in insolvency scenarios, the office-holder powers our insolvency guides cover.

Good instructions produce good reports. Provide full names with variants and date of birth where known, current and historic addresses, known businesses and associates, and the story: what the debt or dispute is, what the subject has said about their means, and any assets already suspected. Context turns searching into targeting.

State the purpose plainly, pre-action assessment, freezing order support, post-judgment enforcement, because purpose shapes both the lawful basis documentation and the output format. A report destined for a freezing order exhibit is written differently from a private strategy note.

And agree the deliverable: sources stated, findings distinguished from inference, confidence levels marked, anomalies flagged, enforcement mapping included. That is Tremark's standard format, built over three decades of putting reports in front of courts, insolvency practitioners and insurers. If an asset question is holding your matter back, our business investigations team will scope it with you before you spend a penny.