Best banks to use if you’re looking after savings for an elderly relative
YOU would think banks and building societies would make life simple for those who look after their loved ones’ affairs. After all, taking on this responsibility for someone when they are no longer able to do it themselves is hard enough as it is.
But banks and building societies can make it difficult, tiresome and time-consuming to get the best savings account – and some are worse than others.
If someone gives you power of attorney, it means you have a legal document that allows you to organise their financial affairs when they are no longer capable of doing it.
Every time you open a savings account with a new provider you need to give it details of the legal document – but how they want this information varies wildly.
It has become easier to prove your power of attorney since the Office of Public Guardian (OPG) launched its online access system for those registered with it on or after January 1, 2016.
In theory, you can send the savings provider an access code and it can check it online.
Bizarrely some insist you post the access code to them or take it into a branch rather than just sending it online. Nationwide only accepts it through its branches or by post while National Savings and Investments (NS&I) says you can give it by post.
If your power of attorney was registered with the OPG before 2016, then you need to take the original or certified copy into one of the provider’s branches, if it has them, or send it through the post.
Big banks such as Lloyds, Halifax, Barclays, HSBC and NatWest say you can upload them online.
Your next task is going through the usual identity checks both for you and the person whose money you are looking after.
Even after you have jumped through these hoops, you can still run into difficulties due to poor administration, as Money Mail readers have found.
Jenny Wylie wrote to Santander on July 1 with instructions that it should pay her 104-year-old uncle Robert’s fixed-rate bond into his account when it matured a month later. Jenny has power of attorney on Robert’s account and wanted the money in his account to pay for his care home fees which are just shy of £5,000 a month. As she had no reply to her letter giving instructions, she phoned the bank twice in July but both times Santander failed to put her through to the team that could help her, because of a high volume of calls and human error.
Only when I asked Santander to look into her case were the original instructions put in place.
A spokesman for Santander says: ‘Due to human error, we did not initially set the option for the funds to be transferred externally when Mrs Wylie contacted us. We are sorry for the inconvenience this caused and have sent a bouquet to Mrs Wylie by way of apology.’
Colin Ellison had problems when his wife Christine’s bond with Cynergy Bank matured in July. Christine is in a care home so Colin, who has power of attorney, wrote to the bank to say he did not want the bond to renew as the money was needed for care fees.
He provided the OPG access code, but the bank wanted to see the original or a certified copy along with Christine’s passport, a letter from the care home to confirm she was there and his wife’s bank details so the money could be sent there.
To add insult to injury, he then received a letter to say it had reinvested the money in another bond. The money is now in his wife’s bank account.
A spokesman for Cynergy says: ‘The matter has now been resolved. Cynergy Bank has since accelerated its internal review to introduce the use of online access codes for identity verification, instead of requiring physical documents to be sent.’ It also gave him £150 as a goodwill gesture.
Not all banks allow you to open or run their accounts with a power of attorney. For example, Access Bank and SmartSave, which offer near-top paying oneyear bond rates, don’t permit this.