POA and the Banks

[jeaux90]

Today Nationwide refused to transfer money from my mothers account to mine for bills I had to pay on her behalf. They have always enabled this in this past.

I have POA registered on her account.

Apparently this is now Nationwide policy to "safeguard" my mother against her own legally signed document and I have to prove invoices.

This is not IFA policy, this is theirs. Is this actually legal? Can they do that?

My solicitor strongly advised me, when splitting supervision of my father’s finances between him and me, not to both try to deal with the same bank “they can’t get their heads round it”. So I set up a separate bank account in his name, with a monthly SO into it, and used that. Similarity, with his permission, I made it so all correspondence from savings accounts went to me not to him.

My elderly parent and I set up a joint account together, their pension gets paid into it but I don't deposit any of my money at all.
We both have bank cards for it and I have the App. It's so much easier than "borrowing" their bank card every time I buy them groceries or do something online on their behalf.

I check the account every day, I know that parent is ok if I can see they've done their usual M&S visit.

Someone did point out on a similar thread once that if for whatever reason a financial assessment was needed, ie by the local authority, that they could only look at 50% of the account funds because it's a joint account.

This all fills me with dread 🤯
I’m just waiting for my mum’s POA certs to come through but I have put her online banking on my phone so I can check what’s going on and that has been sufficient for our needs for now 🥴.
I urgently need to query her power utility bills though so will see what happens when the cert comes through.
How long have others waited for them to come through? I’m on about week 12 🤔

@MereDintofPandiculation yes I'm definitely going to have to move banks and do everything online.

Massive shame, Nationwide put themselves out there as a community building society I think the B and S in that stands for something else.

They have no idea how people's lives work, what setting up a POA means and the hoops you have to jump through. What gave me the rage is them pretending they were "safeguarding" my mother ......sure by trampling all over her legal rights.

@FFSWherearemyglasses to query her utility bills phone them and get your mother to give permission to speak and get that put on her account. Also get her recorded as a vulnerable customer. I found that once this permission was given I could handle all the queries without her. I also set up an online account so I could check the bills and meter readings that way.

Am sorry but not altogether surprised that people still encounter problems with power of attorney documents and registration of same. The power of attorney system has been problematic for years also because it’s antiquated (digitising the registration process could help). Many bank staff are also not given detailed training in how these documents work.

Is this a current account or a savings account? Nationwide's a building society, not a bank, but I know they do have current accounts. I'm guessing this is a savings account if it's passbook only - could you change it to a current account and get a debit card and online access?

Also placemarking - this is in my near future although in reality have been managing DFs finances informally for a long time.

I’ve been as far as talking to DFs bank about what to do once I have the documents back and they of course made it all sound easy.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I’ve been given the expectation that it is all digital - but the formal documents were done earlier in 2024.

Has it been sent and approved by the banks legal team? You should be able to have a card and online banking with it. I had to jump through hoops with Santander to be allowed to use it, even though it had been in place for many years, we needed to get a letter saying that she had lost capacity from a consultant first then send it and a solicitor signed copy of the POA despite them having a copy on file for 10 years previous. It took absolutely weeks and a lot of to and fro with paperwork not being accepted but we got there in the end. As soon as the legal team approved it I was sent a card and details to set up o line banking.

I’ve got this too. It was all set up very easily by Lloyds Bank. I move my Mum’s money around all the time. It helped that Mum has no dementia and was able to clearly articulate her wishes when we set me up on her account.

I have since registered POA but Lloyds don’t know that.

Santander have been great! However Dad's LPAs are the newer ones which have an online code so we could register them remotely.
Dad also gave us power whether or not he had mental capacity because tbh he was pretty lazy with his affairs even before the dementia kicked in. Therefore we did not have to prove capacity like a PP did.

I can use his account just like my own and access online.
The branch staff have been wonderful too and when he was still capable of getting cash out by himself they really went the extra mile to look after him.

I live abroad but still do a lot of banking in the UK as I have a house there that my kids live in. I never had any problems with getting 2FA codes by SMS, nor for any other website that needs - eBay, PayPal, Microsoft.

Some accept my overseas phone, some only my UK phone, but they all work fine. I'm more likely to experience time-outs with my local overseas bank than UK banks. Also on an iPhone, once the banking app is set up you can switch to face recognition - I rarely use a password these days.

To go back to the OP, can you use your POA to switch to an internet-enabled account?

But as someone else mentioned, when my mother was old I became a joint account holder on all her accounts, so I could do anything without question.

To be honest, why don’t you just pay the bills directly from her account? This is what I do for my stepfather. That way, it will clearly show on the bank statement that the money has been used to pay her bill.
For my stepfather, I had to have evidence of any bills I paid for which I want to be reimbursed for before the bank will release funds. Now I just pay directly from his account on which I am named.

I had to complete a new financial assessment for my stepfather’s care home fees this week as his house has now sold so he will be a partial funder for a while. I met with the finance manager at the LA. He was telling me that my SFs finances are quite simple compared to some he has to deal with and that the amount of people with POA who end up being investigated because of the spending decisions they make on behalf of their relative is mind boggling. Fraudulently spending someone else’s money is rife in this situation, because who’s going to complain? Not the relative with dementia who can’t communicate. Safeguarding isn’t about making things easy for someone with POA, it’s ensuring the attorney is acting appropriately.

This.

i am currently dealing with a POA who simply transferred all the donor’s money into their account every month. No receipts, no explanation as to what the money was for, just moved everything out the day after they got paid.

banks should be checking imo. You should be able to produce the bills and evidence what the money is for. That is part of your obligation as POA.

I have the opposite problem my sister was transferring money out of dm account into her own via their banking app before she even registered poa I told them and they did nothing about it now she had poa and is continuing to help herself

Oh this has me worried. My mum is in the process of setting up financial and health POAs,to save any hassles in future. However,she will not use internet banking ( she won't even use cash points),so I forsee issues.

Banks seem to be a law unto themselves.
We are currently in week 12 of trying to get a debit card for her,from TSB. She was a partner in the family business,but dad had the work debit card,she never had one in her name. Now dad has died and left her his share of the business,( so she now owns 50%) and she wants to honour his wishes and carry it on,but the bank are making it impossible to,as they won't issue her a card. We've filled in forms,got letters from the accountants,death certificate,passport,bills,taken two trips to the branch with the two other partners,and provided every bit of information they require,but they change the goal posts all the time. We even had a member of staff ringing my mum and asking to speak to my dad,when they know that he's dead. On one of the visits to the branch,my mum asked if they could photo copy her identification to save another 20 mile round trip,she was advised that there was no point,as the staff would only lose it.😮 It doesn't fill me with confidence.

Report her to the opg.

the POA gives you more power to get it investigated.

@toomanytonotice i have about 3 weeks ago they are investigating it. I have also advised dm bank again and provided them the investigation ref number

I only had a slight problem with one organisation, I can't remember which now, when registering LPA, they requested confirmation that she didn't have capacity to manage her affairs. I replied telling them they had no right to demand anything, as the LPA was the legal document to advise them that the attorney could act for whatever reason. I then received confirmation that they had registered the LPA.

I had poa for my mum with Nat West. They were brilliant. I had a debit card in my name for her account. When she eventually went into a home they moved money from her savings accounts to her current account obviously on my request but it was completely seem less. I'd set up the account before her dementia took hold luckily and so she had signed and agreed to the poa. I did keep all bills and invoices and if I had to draw out cash for any reason I annotated her bank statements . I got paper copies of all bank statements which was helpful for record keeping purposes. but no one ever asked for them.

My Dad is dying and this thread has me decided to be added as a second person on their accounts once he’s gone.
I won’t use it as my mum has capacity but it will be easier.
I’m an only child and do a lot of shopping etc for them as she doesn’t drive and my Dad is now housebound. She just sends me a bank transfer of a round number every few weeks.

The FCA give guidelines, but don't say how that must be achieved. In this case, there will be something saying "protect customers", with every company coming up with their own way of doing that. You will get nowhere incorrectly quoting FCA at them.

Speak to them about upgrading the account to something modern. Set up direct debits so you don't need to transfer anything to your account. You need to work with them to get the best outcome.