PoA admin -hassle registering it at financial institutions

[BeaTwix]

I've got Scottish PoA. So no nice code for me to give financial institutions.

I need to send them an original or a certified copy - some will accept a copy certified by any professional (thanks colleagues!) others only want them done by solicitors (£££).

I also paid for some "official" copies from the office of the public guardian-Scotland (OPG-S) which say clearly on the front "this document does not require to be certified" yet the financial institutions are still rejecting them as photocopies. Because despite being "official" that is what they look like. OPG-S stopped putting nice seals and bindings on docs in 2023.

Doesn't help that the oldie has accounts with over 27 organisations. I'm now down to mostly the ones with <£1000 in them, or that I can't walk into.

I've been trying to sort this out since September. It takes so long and I've spent a fortune on recorded delivery letters and the final insult yesterday was when I tried to use my hard fought card for the oldies bank account the bank declined it despite their being money in the account.

Trying to get this card involved one visit to branch with a tonne of documents, three phonecalls and two trips to Scotland to retrieve it as they wouldn't post it to my home address and the first time I went up the oldie assured me me that my debit card had arrived (I asked them to open it) but it turned out only to be some kind of plastic card with my online banking details on it - not chip and pin, no mastercard symbol. Slightly worrying too that oldie couldn't recognise what a debit card looked like.

I have no idea why the transaction was declined - 30 minutes previously I'd paid in around £500 of re-issued dividend/ rights issue cheques using the same card. So now the oldie owes me money again and after how shirty they got the last time I explained I was taking money to pay myself back I vowed I wasn't going to get into this position again.

Also a word of warning - if you don't pay in your dividend cheques they charge admin fees so the oldie lost a tonne of money as the entire value of some of her small shareholding dividends was eaten up in the re-issuing fees. Oldie should have signed up for DRIP or automatic payment into her bank account years ago but that would have meant them making a sensible decision/ following a system which has never been their strong point even before the current cognitive decline.

I've also finally got PoA registered and online banking set up for their Nationwide accounts (three visits to a branch, an executive level complaint, one new card reader and one phone call) and despite repeatedly saying in branch that I needed to manage the accounts online it transpires that I can't actually transact on any of the accounts. I can only check the balance. Sorting this out is yet another task.

Honestly burnout is very real.

Are you claiming back from your oldie for the recorded delivery costs?

Can you persuade them to give you a “standing imprest” - an amount, say £300, which you top back ip to £300 from their money every time you need to dip into it. Means you can reimburse yourself if you pay something with your own card. Keep good records and receipts.

Or open another bank account on their behalf in a bank convenient to you (even if via banking hun or post office) with a steady SO drip feeding into it.

It’s not so long ago that on-line access for attorneys was completely unheard of, so it doesn’t surprise me you’re having trouble

Your post is a good example of why the whole power of attorney system in this country is falling to bits. It is not digitised and is antiquated. To my mind the whole power of attorney issue has been oversold to the public. Staff do not understand such documents at all. let alone go about processing such and much time is wasted as a result.

Hi there, sorry to hear about the issues you have had. I work for the POA team for one of the major banks, and we do POA registrations over the phone and you can also do so on our website. Our lines are open 7 days a week for this except for bank hols so no need for branch visits. You can take photos of the documents with your phone and upload those to us so no costs for recorded delivery. Hope this helps someone going through the same as you. I know it’s stressful.

27 institutions! That's insane. Can't you close all those accounts or aren't you allowed to do so? Sorry to be morbid, but if your relative were to die, probate would take years. It needs to be sorted now.

@AInightingale you can’t close them until they have recognised the PoA.

The Oldie doesn’t really have capacity anymore to close stuff herself.

And Urm….why do you think I’m trying to sort it out?

I feel your pain. I didn't get to the stage of invoking the PoA we had for my dad before he died. Administering his estate though compared with a friend going through a similar process down south was a nightmare. The court system in England and Wales seems to be set up to help guide executors through it all, you can get guidance online or over the phone, the forms are completed in plain English.

In Scotland you cannot get any help from the courts at all unless it's a small estate, the language on the form is very archaic and formulaic and was beyond me (and I have a Masters degree!) and yes, I also found that there is no standard process between the various banks and financial institutions. RBS I found very helpful. Premium Bonds a total nightmare.

Good luck, it is not an easy process taking on this sort of task.

I am sorry @BeaTwix it really is a nightmare for you. Did not mean to have a go at you as you've had to deal with a mess out of your control, but it's maybe a warning to people with elderly parents who still have capacity to get accounts wound up and streamlined into one or two.

I did have POA for my dad but for practical purposes the most useful thing I did for managing his affairs was be added to his main bank account so it was a joint account with either to sign. Does your person have capacity to do that still?

Presumably by 'this country' you mean Scotland, where the OP is ?

I recently had to get one in England for my parent and both her bank and local council happily accepted the digital codes I generated for them to view it. The doctors surgery and building society required sight of the physical paper document, which they took copies of, but no one has asked for certified copies of anything.

@P00hsticks the new system with codes in E&W is great but the issue remains there for people who wrote their PoA a while ago. The code system is new and doesn't apply retrospectively to older PoA documentation.

Therefore even if I had an E&W PoA I would still be having hassle as this one was written/ registered in 2011 but my oldie has only recently started needing help triggering the registration process.

The lack of familiarity with Scottish documentation isn't helping. There has been quite lot of what I regard as casual racism along the way "oh, this would be much easier if it was a British PoA", "oh, why is everything from Scotland so difficult" etc.

I had a look on the OPG-S website. There is bugger all on there to help staff in financial institutions recognise what the document should look like. There may be stuff hidden from the public but it's making things really hard.
Hey ho.

@Holesintheground I've got current account access.

And apart from when the bank block my debit card and the app doesn't recognise cheques to pay in it mostly works smoothly.

The issue now is the other 26 financial institutions...

I'm currently deciding where to consolidate their money to - needs to have a good online interface and decent interest rate. The number of places that pay terrible interest rates to long standing customers is staggering.

I registered my mother's with HSBC very simply and all online. I was impressed by the simplicity to be honest

Totally agree with the "casual racism" stuff I came up against that when executing dad's estate too. Lots of "we need the probate" and me going blue in the face telling them that the confirmation was all they were getting as probate does not exist in Scotland.

Referring to whom I presume is your mother as ‘the oldie’ is awful.

This fills me with horror. One of my POA, not yet activated, is for someone who probably has a similar number of accounts, who chases interest rates as a hobby, but I don't think closed any after they've moved on to the next one. They've got plenty of spare time to trail around banks and building societies, I don't! Once they reach the point when they're not managing it's going to be awful.

I've tried having the conversation about making things easier in the future but they talk about missing out on interest and the FSCS limit and what happens if the bank crashes!

What a nightmare for you. I'd hoped that banks had improved.

It sounds as if your oldies have a fair amount of cash (certainly more than £85k).

You could look at placing it with a cash platform. There are at least 3 or 4 of these operating in the UK. The charity I am a trustee of uses Insignis (min investment £100k). Hargreaves Lamsdown has a min investment of £5k and Flagstone £10k. We chose the former for ease of having dual signatories and non-signatory access. They are pretty similar.

The platform owner does ONE money-laundering ID check on you on behalf of the financial institutions and also vets the banks that feature on the platform (who all have FSCS coverage if you stay below £85k deposits). Banks advertise what they are prepared to pay and the duration (instant access - 5 years). We're earning about 4.65% this year.

@Jagsy hi sorry a quick Q, we have pdf versions of POA for our parents - will these be ok for the banks etc?

Solidarity fist bump OP. I have had to take over management of finances of a parent and am in process of registering parent POA with banks etc. Doesn’t help they can’t remember where they had accounts. The POA predates the codes and so I had to get hold of certified copies from the solicitor who has the original and because they are crap that took 4 months. Then I’ve been trying to track down the money and register with each. All of which has a different system and forms are often unclear. It is very time consuming to chug through and frustrating. Particularly when you do one and discover there is £28 there.

Yes, you can close and amalgamate as an attorney, or open new accounts in more convenient places. But not more than £80,000 in one institution - anything over £85000 isn’t protected if the institution goes bankrupt, and you need some space for accumulating interest.

No reason for probate to take years. You don’t have to deal sequentially.

I'm currently deciding where to consolidate their money to - needs to have a good online interface and decent interest rate. The number of places that pay terrible interest rates to long standing customers is staggering. Skipton BS differs from most in that when a bond matures, they move it into another 1yr bond with reasonable interest rate if you don’t do anything, rather than tipping it into Instant Acess with a derisory interest rate. No idea what their online capability is. But it’s so nice when that maturity notice comes in to think “well I can just shelve that for a year”

I use Hargreaves Lansdowne for my own savings and I would recommend it if you need/want to split across a number of cash accounts - one set of KYc, one login, easy to access platform. Which it’s important to me as my spare time to manage my finances very limited <bitter laugh>. Probably slightly better rates available by going direct but for me this is the best solution.

I haven’t used them for my parent so can’t speak to how they are on POA set up but they have U.K. call centres who I find helpful which needed to call.

My friend advised me that it's worth getting POA set up on accounts before you need it as it's such a faff and that's been good advice. I'm in Scotland and so are they.

I managed to get their main account done before most of the branches shut down by going in and refusing to budge until they had sorted it as I severely doubted it could be done online as they said. At the other institution they weren't going to allow it as not every page was hand dated, but eventually agreed to leave the room so I could rectify that. I gave up on the third.

I can't imagine having to deal with 27!

Hi, do you mean you have a log in for the gov website and can provide a code to the bank so we can view a summary of the document is that right? Apologies I’m unsure of what you mean by PDF? Who has provided you with the pdf pls

@Jagsy hi no - I looked at them again today and it's just a pdf scan of the originals, from 2015. My sister is going to look into it - I've seen the comments about the code now.

@bestbefore hi, so if you have taken photos/scans of the original document that is fine as you can then upload those photos to us. It can’t be photos of a photocopy however, only the original. So if you have these already all you have to do is call us and we can help get it sorted for you. Also don’t go through the main call centre for the banks, just check the POA team tel number on the banks website.