Why bereavement cases go wrong
Industry write-ups on bereavement in banking describe the same problems again and again:
- Paper and in-person requirements, such as certified death certificates and court papers.
- Executors resubmitting the same details to several departments.
- No status updates, next steps or timelines.
- Deposits, cards and loans sitting on separate systems with no single owner.
- Families bouncing between email, forms, call centres and branches.
- Low priority, because bereavement is a small share of total volume.
What a good process looks like
- One intake. Collect the notice and documents once, in a structured form, and share them across products.
- One owner. Name a single case owner who sees every product the customer held.
- One checklist. Tell the family everything you need in the first conversation. For a Nigerian estate that usually means probate or letters of administration.
- Visible status. Let the family see where the case stands without calling.
- Audit trail. Log every step so you can show who did what and when.
What global vendors offer
Vendors in the US and UK sell digital death-notification portals and case workflows. They take a notice online, capture the death certificate and next-of-kin details, and pass the result to the creditor’s systems by API. Large workflow platforms also ship a notice-of-death workflow. These products are built for those markets and say little about Nigeria.
The step before the notice
Those tools start when someone tells you a customer has died. Often no one does. The account goes quiet, becomes dormant under the CBN guidelines, and the family arrives years later.
Entrustt works earlier. It keeps a register of next of kin with the customer’s consent, runs a quiet-period clock on the signals you already hold, sends check-ins under your name, and escalates to a person. A human reviews the documents before anything is shared, and next of kin receive information only. It does not hold or move money, and your team still decides what happens to the account. Read the product overview or the banks and fintechs page.
A checklist to review your process
- Can a family start a claim without visiting a branch?
- Does one person own the case across every product?
- Do you give the full document list on the first contact?
- Can the family see the status without calling?
- Do you have a current, consented next of kin for each customer?
- Is every step logged and exportable for compliance?
Common questions
What should a bank do when a customer dies?
Collect one notice and the supporting documents, assign a single case owner, give the family a full checklist, keep them updated, and log every step. In Nigeria the estate’s representative will usually need probate or letters of administration.
Can a bank release funds to the next of kin?
Generally the bank releases funds to the person with legal authority over the estate. The next of kin is the contact person, not automatically the heir.
How does Entrustt help with deceased customers?
It keeps a consented register of next of kin, monitors for customers who go quiet, runs check-ins and escalation, and routes any handover through a human reviewer. It gives information only and never holds or moves money.