Closing bank accounts under Power of Attorney

Whatever they say in their advertising the real purpose of all banks is to make as much money from their customers as they can.  They do this by paying as little interest as possible on the money that they borrow and charging as much interest as they can on the money that they lend.

Banks have many tricks and procedures for doing this and my father fell foul of many of them. A standard trick is to advertise a high rate of interest for savings to get you to open an account and drop the rate after a few months without telling you. Similarly they will lend to you at a low rate of interest and then put the interest rate up.  They will also make it as hard as they can for you to close an account or withdraw money from it.

After my father's death I took over my mother's financial affairs under Lasting Power of Attorney (see below).  She had small amounts of money in accounts with the following companies:  NatWest, Egg, Brittania, ING, N&SI, Sainsbury's, Nationwide, Yorkshire, Alliance Trust.

Over the past few months I've been trying to either close these accounts or register myself as an attorney and I have listed my experiences here in the hope that it will be of help to other people.

Name	Interest Rate (Gross)	Time taken to answer my letter	No. of items of ID required	No. of forms to fill out	LPA verified every page
N&SI Direct ISA	2.5%	5 days	0	0	Yes
Nationwide ISA	0.25%	7 days	4	1	Unknown
Yorkshire ISA	1.1%	7 days	6	1	No
Sainsbury's (RBS)	0.1%	9 days	4	2	No
Egg	1.25%	12 days	0	0	No
Britannia	0.1%	13 days	4	0	No
ING	0.5%	13 days	0	2	No

The Sainsbury's account which is run by the Royal Bank of Scotland had £84 in it. In order to close this account I had to send 4 verified copies of identification (2 for me and 2 for my brother who I have joint LPA with), a verified copy of the Lasting Power of Attorney plus two copies of their form for opening a new account as an attorney.

I had also asked Britannia if they held any accounts for my father and they replied asking for his death certificate.  Once I had sent this they replied that he didn't hold any accounts with them. Surely the wrong way around?

Nationwide has better ISA rates available but you have to go to a branch to switch.  I have now switched the Yorkshire ISA by post to a different ISA paying 2.25%.

I think that banks make closing an account complicated on purpose so that you get put off. Then after a few months they transfer the money to a dormant account which pays next to nothing in interest and they can lend
your money to other people. Of course, if you ask for your money back they have to give it to you but most people forget about it.

If you are taking over the financial affairs of an elderly person it's worth checking the British Banker's Association dormant account register http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=144
to see if they have any accounts that they've forgotten about. It's also worth going through all old piles of papers in detail and writing to any company where they appear to have ever held an account.

To help this process along it's a good idea to go to a solicitor and get verified copies of your passport, a recent utility bill, a second utility bill and the Lasting Power of Attorney. The going rate is £5 per copy but my helpful local solicitor copied around 20 documents for £30. Some banks insist on every page of a document being verified and others accept documents where just the first page is verified. An alternative is to go into a branch of the bank where they are obliged to make copies free of charge or you can also send original documents and ask for them to be returned.

The Post Office offers a Signed For service http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?catId=400028&mediaId=500201 which costs £1.15 for a letter and £1.40 for a large letter. My experience is that documents sent Signed For are dealt with more quickly as the banks take them more seriously.