Bank has lost sensitive information

shaggyjh

Hi there i'm new so please be kind, sorry for the essay!!

My girlfriend and I have recently had an offer on a house accepted so we decided to get a joint bank account.

She has a 2 Natwest bank a/c's. One is her personal a/c and the other is purely for bills which she transfers money into at the start of the month from her personal a/c and pays her existing mortgage, water, leccy and council tax etc from.
We decided to make this our joint a/c and just add me to the a/c then i will transfer from my a/c into the joint one.

We went in to our local branch of Natwest on Feb 14th (Valentine's pressie!!) and i filled out the form and let them take a copy of my Photo drivers license and a copy of my passport. My girlfriend also increased her overdraft limit at this point.

We chased by phone on 26th Feb to the Natwest customer services number who said that they had no record of our joint application. But said they would give our local branch till midday the next day to ring us. We then received a letter on 1st March to say that they regretfully had lost our details.

Now, where do we stand with this. Obviously someone has:

My girlfriend's a/c details
My: name,
address
date of birth
security word
copy of driver's license
copy of passport

A ready made kit for any wannabe identity thief :mad:

How should we take the matter further, and what if anything are the bank liable for? We have drafted a letter to send to the bank but would like a bit of advice first.

Thank you for any help, it would be greatly appreciated.

amandathepanda

The chances are that the paper work has been lost either at the branch or at the account opening centre. It is all handled internally, so no one will have access to your account details apart from Natwest staff. If any of the staff were dishonest there is not a lot they could do with a photocoped driving Licence or passport as for id purposes people need to see the originals.
You could take the matter further, but I think that all you would get from them is a written apology. Hope this helps.

techno_geek

You should also try asking for some monetary compensation for any distress and inconvenience caused lol

I did this with the Halifax, and got £50!

jonesMUFCforever

Well as long as a potential fraudster does not look like you and does not live at the same address as you I think you should be ok.

shaggyjh

Is there no way then that they could use all our info to get credit cards or a loan in our name, obviously if it fell into the wrong hands?

Who knows where the info has gone? It might be on the floor under someone's desk or it could be in a bin somewhere ready for Mr identity thief.

I just thought in the society we live in at the moment with data protection, identity fraud etc that it might be an issue worth worrying about.