It's that time of the year again when people who have savings in buildings societies get to vote on whether or not the directors should be re-elected and whether it's okay for them to award themselves salary increases. But voting becomes quite difficult if the person that you are acting for under Power of Attorney has savings at Yorkshire Building Society. Here are Yorkshire Buldings Society's notes for voting under Power of Attorney:
"If you are the holder of a power of attorney on behalf of a member and wish to vote, you must attend the meeting in person. You cannot appoint a proxy.
A member entitled to vote who has given a power of attorney is not prevented from appointing a proxy or attending and voting in person at the AGM instead of his/her attorney."
So my mother, who is now unable to write, can vote for herself or I can spend a whole day going to a meeting in Bradford.
You can see, in an earlier post, http://carehomemap.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/yorkshire-building-society.html, the full text of the letter that I wrote when this happened last year and their reply saying how they were trying to change this rule - but the wording in the rules is exactly the same this year as it was last year.
I've decided to stop using Yorkshire Building Society and I've transferred my mother's small ISA savings to another company.
There's an interesting article here calling for the finance industry to clean up its dealings with people who have power of attorney
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/17/power-of-attorney
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