People locator expands into corporate market

A YORKSHIRE business that traces long lost relatives and friends is expanding into the corporate sector after investing in new technology.

FinderMonkey, based in Leeds, currently traces more than 5,000 people a year but a contract with Burnley Borough Council’s streetscene, cleansing and environmental health department has spurred its directors on to extend its services.

On behalf of the council, the company locates people who have failed to pay fines issued for parking tickets, litter and fly-tipping offences.

The business was established in 2008 by John Arko and Ryan Shaw, who both had extensive backgrounds in people finding.

Mr Arko said: “We have been investigating the corporate market for a while, and working with Burnley Council confirmed to us that the time was ripe to establish FinderMonkey further into the B2B market.

“To achieve this we have updated our existing systems and bought in new ones, while also ensuring our employees are fully trained to be able to work with corporate clients and handle cases with integrity and discretion at all times.”

FinderMonkey says it is different to other such companies because it does not rely entirely on computer systems, instead using real people to ensure every possible avenue is explored to reach a conclusion.

Mr Arko hopes the firm’s services will be used by businesses for a variety of reasons.

“Businesses cannot afford, or be seen, to let debts go uncollected just because someone has changed their address, and this is especially important in the current economic climate,” added Mr Arko.

“However, people finding is not just about tracing debtors; investment companies will often want to find someone who has a policy that has matured but that has not claimed it because they have forgotten about it and they quite often have moved addresses several times over the intervening years.

“We are also able to find landowners on behalf of developers, as well as cleaning databases for organisations that want to reconnect with existing clients or sell to prospective ones.”