MSE News: Complaints over banks' handling of power of attorney rising

It is about time that banks were forced to re-employ qualified senior staff locally to actually own the more difficult problems of servicing ordinary customers throughout lifetimes.

The way banks were handling deceased customers' affairs was abysmal a few years ago, and there is not much evidence to suggest that after they started outsourcing it (a right royal cop-out) that it has got much better recently.

The Financial Ombudsman's latest advice on Power of Attorney handling is laughably shallow, and that is quite likely because the person that approved it might well be a dyed in the wool bank staffer taking a career turn in the Ombudsman's office before they bog off back into banking with inside information on how to play against the customer and the Ombudsman.

It is sickening how everything is described as a "process" when what is actually meant is that there is merely a set of online written instructions for a local bank staff to read when unsure how to tackle a task of this nature which they may only deal with a few times a year, and which instructions are barely a step up from the sort they used to issue for constructing flat-pack MFI furniture. You or I could read it and then sit down and advise a customer on it with an equally broad spectrum of results.

The bank staff might read it 5 minutes before the appointment, or more likely during it, and after you've gone for a few minutes before fudging it to shift the paperwork if they are not sure.

At least if you made a muck up of reading instructions to put together your own MFI furniture, you had to look at it yourself until you threw it out as something less than appealing.

In 2015, local front line bank staff don't look at anything beyond the day they tackle it (or not). Every day is a new day, and yesterday's problems belong to some faceless department to whom they posted yesterday's work in the internal mail (or not).

And don't expect today's bank managers to step in an offer any real help - they are nothing but jumped up sales supervisors willing to do whatever is the bank's bidding from one day month or year to the next. 'The complete chameleon' would be a good description of most we have now. It's a survival tactic, and an ok living can be had if you keep your bosses happy with form filling, and chivvy and discipline your staff sufficiently to make whatever targets were dreamed up last week, preferably following the set scripts and processes of course. There are no targets on well handled Powers of Attorney, I'll wager!

I sometimes despair at how awful people like the FOS and FCA are at changing anything for the better other than scratching the surface when real problems like this become unavoidably conspicuous. No wonder it always takes years for any real change to occur, and it usually takes MSE to force it.

Bring back proper bank managers by government mandate. Then ensure that they live or die by customer reputation and not by their reputations with sales directors.

Interesting take on things, Mav6215 !

So you find the banks are broadly manageable in assisting in your sole conduct of your wheelchair bound mother's financial affairs using your sole LPA, and even allow you with a bit of perseverance to use the latest fangled Barclays online gismos (CloudIT?? Forgive me, but whatever does one use that for in running an aged parent's bank account? ).

Meantime your brother and sister in law who live with her are (a) unapproachable and (b) untrustworthy ? Boo, hiss!

I can't help feeling, however, that POAs and the like were intended more for protecting the elderly from the confusing world, not for using as weapons by clever siblings with no income of their own wishing to outmanoeuvre less cleaver siblings in order to restrict the outgos so they don't get used up ?

Sometimes the world seems a bit upside down, doesn't it?

Some might say no wonder the banks are not falling over themselves to help open up easy banking channels when feuding families are making it an absolute minefield.

I must say that in order to completely obviate the situation were siblings cannot trust each other, no POA should ever be granted to one of them unless all siblings agree. And if they can't agree but a POA is still needed, then the OPG should rule that the POA requires all to agree and if they don't, the OPG should take over immediately.

"No need to get a solicitor involved " did you say in another thread? Or forgive me, maybe that was just to save money on creating copies by getting your mother to certify several photocopies of the original (solicitor) registered copy?

You also said you'd liberally sprinkled those POA copies around several different financial institutions and that some even accepted them (certified copies?) by email?

Sounds like you've got quite a grip and created lots of flexibility.

Well done! (I think).