More monkey business for Yorkshire people finders

Yorkshire based people-finding service FinderMonkey is set for expansion after finding an original and potentially lucrative niche in the market.

Over the past year, FinderMonkey has starting using its location skills to find people for commercial reasons, as well as for personal ones.

Business owners, Ryan Shaw and John Arco, are now increasing the size of their tracing team as part of a £25,000 investment provided by Santander Business Banking, to cope with the demand.

FinderMonkey was originally set up three years ago by childhood friends Ryan and John who launched the service to reunite long lost friends and relatives. Since then, they have traced more than five thousand people, for both personal and business reasons, including absentee landlords for Burnley Council and players from the Don Revie era for Leeds United.

More than half its work now involves tracing debtors, cleaning up company databases, finding tenants who owe money and helping lawyers uncover the owners of unregistered land.

Ryan Shaw, co-founder of FinderMonkey said: "There are a lot of people search websites that allow people to search databases but very few organisations like ours where the searches are carried out by experienced tracing specialists and genealogists. There may not be a teary-eyed reunion at the end of the job but it is the sort of work that has helped us expand both our team and our turnover. 

"The financial support we have received from Santander Business Banking will be used to support further growth and will create several new jobs.  We are delighted with the support we have received from Santander and we are glad to moving forward with their support."

Naz Haq, Local Business Manager at Santander Business Banking in Leeds said: "I'm pleased we have been able to support the expansion of FinderMonkey. I think they have found an ingenious niche in the market and I think they will continue to go from strength to strength. At Santander, we're keen to support strong businesses with ambitious and viable plans for the future and I think our agreement with FinderMonkey is an excellent example of this."