Unrecognised loan

canidae

Hi Everybody

My mother & father who are in their very late 70's recently started looking for help with an attendance allowance for my mother who has difficulty walking.

One of the things that was needed were details of savings.

My mother has always looked after the money since they married 40+ years ago. She gets a state pension and my father receives one from his former employer.

When my father went to the bank for savings details there was nowhere near the savings he expected which started us investigating. The bank produced details of Direct debits from their joint account which included two loans my father knew nothing about.

At this point it is worth noting my mother is waiting tests for amongst other things Alzheimers as her memory and ability to prioritise has deteriarated so much. My mother said she knew nothing about the loans.

Obviously shocked by the lack of savings my father called my brother & I and we started searching for old statements as my mother has a habit of not throwing everything out.

What we found was a letter addressed to their house for a loan in 2008 which was to run for 4 years with my mothers name on it. We have to take her claim of not remembering with a pinch of salt due to her current mental condition.

However there was also a letter for a much larger loan which started in 2009 running over 5 years in my dad's name and he definitely does not remember anything about it. The monthly payments for these loans amount to £140 & £240 respectively.

On top of that they have over the past two bank statements that we could find there have been charges of £130 & £160 for going overdrawn.

Although the charges are excessive, to say the least, my brother and I can at least topup the account to make sure they do not go over again but the main concern is the loan in my dads name.

My dad is certain he didn't take the loan out and his mind is still sharp enough that we believe him plus he has always brought us up to avoid loans or credit cards so it is not in his nature to have taken one out. Our biggest concern is what will happen if this is not some cowboy taking a loan out in his name, but rather what if it was my mother in one of her less lucid states?

Any help or constructive advice appreciated.

Apples2

You neeed to pull your Dad's credit files to see the extent of this (there may be more)

Look at Experian & Equifax. You will need a lot of details from your Dad, a statutory report is £2.
Once you get that, you will see all debts in his name, then go from there.

ylesia

Hi

So sorry you have found yourself in this position, this is similar to a position I found myself in 7 years ago.

My Mum had ran up a lot of debt without my Dad knowing and after trying to get the full truth out of her (didn't work) I finally went down the route of getting her credit files. If your Dad has a debit or credit card in his name then the quickest way to do this is online, only problem is they may ask questions about debts that your Dad is not aware before then give you access (to verify identity).

Best of luck and I hope you get it sorted out

2sides2everystory

You may need to act swiftly and carefully in case there has been a fraud by someone known to your parents and they get wind that you are on to it and start covering their tracks.

Are the loans from your parents' normal bank ? If not, then that may discount the more simple type of inside job by bankworkers (sorry to say, it even reaches the national news sometimes).


Is there any evidence at all in the paperwork which shows to what account the money was paid?

If the loan company is not known to your parents, is it a well known entity? If it is, the better your chances of quickly getting to the bottom of it.

I would guess that you and your brother have not got around to discussing arrangement of a Lasting Power of Attorney so either of you can act in your parents stead. You will not be the only siblings to have reached the conclusion almost too late. You will need a lawyer to set that up properly for you ... sounds like it is time.

My parents are a little older and we've also been putting it off too long. They've already been conned at the door and lost sentimental items to callous robbers whilst distracted.

Callous robbers come in many guises. There are a growing breed of people to whom having a conscience is seen as a weakness, who do not believe in an afterlife or any kind of divine retribution and who prey on the elderly and befriend them in order to gain control of assets.

Anyway, if now is the time to see a solicitor to set up Lasting Power of Attorney (PoA), then it might also be that the solicitor can help with making enquiries about these worrying loans. Otherwise without a PoA you are likely to have to tow your Mum & Dad around to various offices or at least physically sit at the telephone next to them in order to get yourself authorised to talk to the companies involved. However, that might take time and maybe you and your brother are up for a bit of effective detective work yourselves.

As I said earlier - start by following the real money. Not the payments but the original capital sum loaned. If these were sizeable loans then they will not have been given in cash. They would almost certainly in the last five years have been paid electronically into a current account and if not into your parents normal current account then where?

The loan company will have those details. If the money was paid as a cheque then that would indicate something a bit unusual and the instant question would be who asked for it to be a cheque and what was recorded as the purpose of the loan ?

And also the banks should quickly and at a glance be able to tell your parents (and you if with them and your parents authorise it) what the turnover in the accounts has been from year to year over the last few years, perhaps tax years, even if they can't tell you immediately the transactions behind the turnover.

That way you may spot a massive inflow (of loan money) in a particular year into a current account, or a massive outflow from a savings account in a particular year indicating roughly when it may have been tapped.

Good luck, and I hope you quickly find a plausible explanation. The loans are a big worry. The missing savings could on their own perhaps be explained by the bank having persuaded them to churn it as they do constantly - my parents bank did that several times with some sizeable chunks and left them totally confused about what was now where.

Do act swiftly and carefully though. If you are unlucky enough (or lucky enough depending on how you look at it) to spot an obvious fraud then consider whether it is evidenced sufficiently to involve the police. For anonymous and unexplained fraud on bank accounts / fraudulently obtained loans you may find them disinterested because there is a broad agreement between government/police and banks that the banks are the ultimate victims because they will reimburse the customer. However, if names start appearing in the frame then involve the police immediately.

Even if the loans turn out to be ostensibly legitimate and you can see where the money went then they still have to be questioned. Who was selling sizeable loans to people that age whose finances had until old age been very conservative ?

Unfortunately, the banks have been pressing their staff to ridiculous levels over the past decade to churn customers including elderly customers. And sadly some bank staff fit descriptions I made earlier with a few rotten apples even going further than just using gullible people to meet their sales targets.

PS Apple2's/ylesia's suggestion is also very useful of course, but might simply confirm the loans / credit you've already found although it might show other interesting and unexpected activity. It will also of course quickly help you bound the extent of any credit. The credit file will not however tell you where the loan monies or the savings went which I imagine is key.

Jaymo

If these loans genuinely weren't taken out by either of your parents then this would need to be reported to the Bank where the savings were taken from.

Two positives are that:

1) You said the funds were taken via Direct Debit so you are covered by the Gaurentee so you can contact the Bank for a Direct Debt Imdemnity (DDI).

2) You're covered by the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme) for up to £85,000 (per Banking license).

You should contact the loan companies and ask for a copy of the original Credit Agreements if a lot of money has been taken out in your parents name then you maybe should think about doing a Subject Access Request (SAR) with each company.

I appreciate the above posters comment about Power of Attorney (PoA) but in order to resolve this situation quickly and effectively it will be simpler to have your mum/dad phone up the loan company/bank and have them give permission for you to discuss details.

Mainly because setting up PoA can take several weeks to be processed as you'd need to obtain certified copies of documents, i.d. etc

However, my initial thought is that these loans were taken out by your parents due to them having letters regarding it but obviously you won't know more without investigating and as the companies are legally obliged to keep copies of the CCA's you'll be able to get a copy of the original agreement to check the signature etc.

Good luck!

2sides2everystory

Jaymo, I hadn't thought of the Direct Debit Guarantee scheme coming into play - that's an interesting one to explore for a very rapid reimbursement of these loan payments if it is clear the loans were the work of fraudsters. If the DD Guarantee section at the bank discover and become convinced that the DD amounts were taken incorrectly they can be extremely good in putting the money back fast and asking remaining questions later.

Not sure about the FSCS scheme coming into play however. That's a false hope I think on the savings front. Isn't that primarily a government sponsored industry funded guarantee of bank solvency ? Didn't think it could be used to guarantee funds that simply disappeared? Surely that suggestion is not quite right ? See their website front page: https://www.fscs.org.uk :
The FSCS is the compensation fund of last resort for customers of authorised financial services firms. If a firm becomes insolvent or ceases trading we may be able to pay compensation to its customers.

Yes arranging PoA and getting it registered with the bank is a pain, largely because frontline bank staff don't handle enough of them to get them spot on right every time. They usually have to follow some pages in a dusty manual (or more likely these days, a dark corner of their intranet!) a bit like following instructions on building an Airfix kit. And sometimes yes, bits get broken and become very sticky for all in the general area! It's topical though, I think.

Let us know how you get on, OP.

canidae

Went to the bank today with my dad to see what we could find. Manager said that the loans were signed for in the bank and paid into their account to pay off old debts. Wasn't interested at all in my dads assertation that he had never been into the bank.
We said we would like copies of all the data they held and she said "you just want statements really then"
I said no we wanted all the data they had including transactions records of contracts and letters as per my dad's rights under the data protection act and handed her a copy of the request letter from this site after asking if she wanted the £10.00 maximum fee (I had a copy of each version of the letter ready depending on her answer). This appeared to confuse her and she sad she wouldn't have time to do that.
I explained that I understood but really I was not interested in her having a heavy workload, it was my dad's right to request such information. She eventually said she would have to pass it onto a central office which I accepted would be needed anyway and claryfied the bank had 40 days as per the letter to provide such information.

When I questioned her about the bank charges she just gave a standard "they are the charges all banks charge similar" line. I explained that my parents were caught in a loop as they were never overdrawn by more than the charges so the charges being added each month made it difficult to regain a normal footing. This was simply dismissed by saying they were spending too much and that was what was keeping them over the limit.

We came away very disappointed and will await the data to see our next step.

2sides2everystory

canidae, the story of your visit sounds very odd. So the loans are with their bank and no-one else ?

Did you see evidence of where the loan money was paid in, and then where it went out to pay the "old debts"?

'Managers' in banks are not actual bank managers at all thesedays. They are sales progress chasers. You were interrupting sales. It is very inconvenient to have someone come in and ask pointed questions about banking.

This particular 'manager' sounds contemptuous and contemptible.

Did you get to see a summary of the annual throughput of cash in the accounts ?

No way would I leave it at that this week. That manager would be seeing a lot more of me before Friday. If you play it their way, you'll be waiting almost the entire 40 days and if there were any shenanigans at the bank, then files may have been 'disappeared' (they are still not exclusively held centrally - they may be in the back of a filing cabinet at the branch).

Have you any idea what the old debts might possibly have been ?

Could they perhaps have been a shortfall in an endowment mortgage that ended and suddenly they needed to make up the shortfall?

I think you can safely name the bank here (but don't name the location). It would also be useful to know some dates and broad terms of the loans. Did they include PPI for example?

Then people who have experience of the way particular banks process loans of the type and handle complaints like yours may be able to offer some more exacting help.


Did this 'manager' actually register a formal complaint ? I bet she didn't. She should have but for the moment that's her look out. You can possibly extract more from her locally whilst no formal complaint is in progress than if you press her to register a complaint (that'll be an excuse for her to say that complaints department centrally is handling it, not her = more official delays)

Is your Dad upset or willing to go back and stick it to them again? If there are other personal bankers at the branch then you could perhaps try the most friendly looking and sit with them both looking at the same screen and doing more detective work. There is nothing obliging you to have to endure another session with the same person. You could even perhaps for further detective work try a bigger branch of the same bank although your Dad would have to have all his ID on him and preferably his card and PIN number. You don't have to disclose the total problem, just that you are helping your Dad to understand where the monies came in and went out and you understand that although you might not be able to see the transactions going back so long, there will be some electronic data to look at under the loan account itself, and there will be the long term direct debit record on the screen for the current account confirming 40 payments for example and there will also be an annual turnover screen which shows the total of all money in and all money out for the last few years which is one of the tools they use for assessing the worth of the current / savings accounts to the bank.

All these screens will be just as easily accessible at any branch in the country as at your parent's local branch.

Depending on how you then feel about it and your Dad feels about it, there would be nothing stopping you putting in a complaint about the attitude of the manager at the other branch if it was as offhand as it sounds in your post. Again, don't instigate any new complaint about the main problem (the possibility of unauthorised loans) or even get as far as disclosing your fears about that again, just one about the unhelpful attitude of the manager. It might serve to start putting a useful spotlight on her activities depending on the current level of your suspicions. It isn't nice to imagine that a few rotten bankworkers might prey on old people but sadly history shows that a few do and it is definitely not routine retail banking business for large multiple loans to be given to septuagenarians.

As I said, in order to find out exactly what happened here (and not get fobbed off) you need to continue to act swiftly and carefully.

What does your Dad want to do ? Might there be some more paperwork in the house that sheds some light on what the manager meant by "old debts"?

Is your brother still onboard with getting stuck in? Might your parents have helped your brother or some other family member e.g. with house purchase or a car purchase or maybe a grandchild with university debts or starting a business ?

It wouldn't be unusual for parents that age to have discovered family debts and offered to help without necessarily letting the rest of the family know immediately or letting the recipient know that they had to borrow it themselves.

Some might do that and intend to balance it out later.

Do press on with the attendance allowance applications - it looks like the extra cash (which actually as you may know is not means tested) will be very useful in the worst case. Make sure you apply for both parents - I don't suppose your father is exactly as fit as the butchers dog if he is in his late seventies? Maybe your mother might be assessed for the higher level of attendance allowance but your father may qualify for the lower level too. As you may already know, there is no assessment of what specifically your parents need to spend it on or any restriction on what your parents use the money for once it is agreed.

The people that come round and do an assessment for attendance allowance are usually from the Adult Care Department at the Local Authority office. I think they also have their eye on recording assets to offset for future long term care costs. That is why the topic of your parents' assets has come up, not because of the attendance allowance application itself.

In this case it is good that it did raise the question of savings else you may not have known there was a problem.

Keep us posted. As I said, if you say which bank and how much and when, then there may be some posters who can give you specific advice in relation to what to look for in that bank.

canidae

Thanks for the feedback everyone. The bank is Lloyds TSB. On top of everything else my brother and I found out that my mum and dad were on a premiere type of bank account costing them £25.00 a month.
My brother is going down again, with my dad, on Monday as I cannot get more time off work.
We are also looking at setting up an account away from Lloyds TSB. hopefully one that doesn't allow them to go overdrawn and crank up the charges again.
Unfortunately my mother filled in the Attendance allowance forms and posted them without showing them to us so the claim came back yesterday rejected as she has only put down she needs walking sticks to get around.

want-it-all

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Did an assessor from the Local Authority Adult Care Team come out to do an assessment? Sounds like they being extremely mean at your parents' Local Authority. Does anyone reading this thread know how to gel them into some decent action and a reversal of this crass decision?

Unlike DLA, which is for under-65s (when first claimed), Attendance Allowance has no mobility component. It is for care needs only.

So, if the mother put down that she needs two sticks to walk - and that's pretty much all she said - AA cannot be awarded.

That doesn't mean, though, that she's not eligible if she does have care needs. These care needs need to be expressed on paper, though, so the decision maker can decide whether or not an award can be made.

OP, does you mother have care needs? For example, does she need help with things like dressing, washing, toileting, etc.? Additionally, does she need supervision, for example to keep her from danger? (you indicate Alzheimer's...a diagnosis of Alzheimer's in itself will not lead to an AA award, but the specific care needs associated with it may).

It is OK for you - or anybody else - to fill in her AA application form, so long as it's indicated on the form that a third party is filling it in (there'll be a special section for this). The trick to DLA/AA success is to record as much info as you can (always truthfully of course, lest any problems occur later), focussing not upon what medical problems the claimant has, but specifically how these medical problems affect the person's day to day living.