Order of our names changed on joint bank account

[Maresmaid]

Many years ago my husband and I opened 2 joint bank accounts. One was set up in joint names with his name first and the other in joint names with my name first so that we could easily identify which account was which. The account with his name first received our salaries and transferred a regular amount to the account with my name first which then paid out all the various household dd’s. I recently needed to set up a new standing order to the account with my name first and discovered that the names have been switched round by the bank without our knowledge so both accounts now show my husbands name first.

I am fully aware that this makes no difference to my legal claim to the money in the account and it’s just really an admin issue, but it’s made me feel like making a fuss and insisting they change it back. I deal with the family finances, I use the mobile and banking app, when something needs paying husband asks me to log on and do it, so technically I am the primary user and i feel like making a stand about the sexism of automatically showing husbands name before wife’s.

Am I being unreasonable if I complain to the bank?

The higher earner thing usually only applies to a mortgage, some banks put the higher earner first, some put the youngest person as it dictates the term and there are probably other permutations. But changing an existing account is odd, seems like a systems migration issue alright. I would be looking to have it changed back as well I'm afraid!

If I remember correctly when the Halifax stopped being a building society and its customers got payouts ( I was an appreciative student at the time), there was an issue with the payouts for joint accounts going to the man as by default the man's name was first even in accounts that were originally in the woman's name and him being subsequently added, so yes complain and it is a women's issue.

I can only guess your colleague doesn’t actually know what a Christian name comes from lol

Actually I think a complaint is fair.

Why him? Patriarchy? Sexism? Income?

It’s about time we started challenging these things.

I just found my parents sale documents from when they sold their house in 1971. It was sold to Mr John Thompson and his wife. That phrase appeared more than once in the documents. Made me wonder why they bothered including the wife at all.
This was in England.

I can imagine with data entry they like the names to appear the same on each account so they can group them easily. It helps the bank tracknyour financial health, especially if you miss a payment to them, but there is no reason you cannot ask them to change the order.

I had exactly this too. My name was first for years, but I didn't actually notice when it switched. When I did, it had already been at least 2 years (I had the account for 30+ years, and it's been joint for 25. I noticed a few years ago).

This is not a very 'minor' issue: A minor is a child who is not entitled to a bank account in their own name as they are not an adult.

This is a total MAJOR 'cockup' as it is the Male who benefits!

A joint account in marriage when its between a man & a woman is a joint account belonging to the husband & wife, or should I have said wife and husband? 🤔 Utterly ridiculous.

How on earth are they benefiting by having their name first?

Maybe it’s not actually set up as a proper joint account … you may only have third party access. You get a card and pin but cannot manage the account.

But how do we know this is the case for every institution? They may well call it a joint account - and treat it as such for all everyday purposes e.g. both can pay in, withdraw, make payments from it, transfer, set up direct debits and all that... but for all we know, they may indeed officially consider it an account with a primary and secondary account holder - meaning that, technically, the second person only has (the same) authority to use it because the first person (the account owner) has consented to sharing it.

A 'Christian' name comes from the name you were officially given when you were Christened; this is why secular equivalents are called baby naming ceremonies.

It was widely used historically in the UK (and still is, usually be people from older generations), because it was the norm for almost all babies to be Christened, so it would be assumed that everybody had a first/Christian name.

Nowadays, a great many people in this country are not Christened: where parents have different faiths, parents don't have any religious faith, and indeed a great many parents with a committed Christian faith - as Christening itself has no Biblical basis and is only a traditional custom that many choose.

Some of the banking software right at the bottom of the ground here was written in the 1960s, when there was no such thing as a joint account.

Bank profits being as important as they are, all the "fixes" to make this system work with joint names are as shonky as you might imagine.

And it's not use hoping this well just fade away, as systems being written as I speak (by AI, obviously) are forced to have to follow this course to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing.

Another manifestation of this lash up is how case gets lost and all of a sudden YOUR NAME IS JUST IN UPPER CASE.

We had it the other way around - also with HSBC. For some reason, the statements all came out normally, as per the names given when the accounts were opened, and (for the joint account), the same order (we went with standard Mr & Mrs in the traditional order)... however, we received all marketing mailshots that they sent out in the post twice, both addressed to 'Mrs'.

We meant to raise it with them, but it wasn't our top priority - being mainly just junk mail; but eventually, they changed their company policy and stopped sending out rubbish in the post, and changed to putting it as annoying pop-ups on online banking instead, so that kind of resolved it.

I'm guessing it's either system 'updates' (based on programmed 'traditional' conventions) or maybe, if a human data enterer is involved, HSBC offshore as much as they can, so it's probably somebody in a country that is less 'progressive'/more sexist and/or they aren't familiar with British names and don't necessarily know which ones are usually male or female.

Definitely, they've been trained by humans after all.

I've not had this with bank accounts but I did have an incident with NTL (now Virgin Media) when they refused to speak to me when I phoned up so I said that if they didn't speak to me, I would cancel our direct debit and go elsewhere as the monthly fee was taken from our joint bank account. They then magically suggested a password on the account.

On our council tax bill, my name is first,

Do computers do sexism?

No.

They do exactly - I mean exactly - what they are told to do. It's kinda their signature existence.

There's a whole conspiracy theory based around the names all in capitals on official government documents - whereby people claim that each baby is officially registered as a corporation at birth, and you remain so for life - meaning that you, as a corporation, are wholly subject to the crown/government and thus they control/own you.

It's usually cited by people who also use the phrase 'freeman of the land' - I've no idea what the provenance is of the belief or where it originated.

I'd definitely close the account in that instance and tell them why.

Lots of banks have premium accounts with insurance packages and some of them may be less sexist!

This is totally and completely untrue!

I’m still shocked that financial institutions behaved like this so relatively recently. (As in during my lifetime)

That's my point - they are trained/programmed by sexist humans, so they act in sexist ways.

AI is the same.

This is likely down to a system change/standardisation. You can amend your account display name/statement name so it suits you. Even give accounts nicknames which will show on your online banking etc.

You can also identify the account with the account number. I’m not sure it warrants a complaint.

I work for a major high street bank and can assure you it’s not salary driven nor is it driven by sexism. I suspect it’s reverted to the acc name rather than the statement name during a back office change. It’s mildly inconvenient at most. It can be fixed.

I am mildly amused at being gently called a nutter.

There are plenty of systems still in use that can only store upper case. No matter what you type in at your end. A vague legacy of earlier encoding systems (that originally came from Telex) and the official preference for upper case to avoid confusion with all the different scripts kicking around.

A good digital archaeologist should be able to spot where data has passed into such a system.

Newspapers still do it. Drives me potty, "'A man, his wife snd two children were in a shootout"