Disappearing CHAPS payment

simonbaughen

My daughter has an account with Santander, Whiteladies Road, Clifon branch. She was due to complete the purchase of a flat in Southampton on Friday 24 February 2017. She had already paid the deposit through CHAPS to her solicitors and on the morning of Thursday 23 February 2017 she went to the branch to arrange payment to the solicitors' Client Account of the balance of £122,409 by CHAPS. The money left her account, but as of today’s date has not been received at the nominated bank account with Barclays. She notified the branch immediately and has been constantly told that ‘the matter is under investigation’. This is the same information that has been given to the Financial Ombudsman who is investigating this matter. We have double checked with the CHAPS receipt and can confirm we gave the correct sort code and account number.


Any suggestions as to where we can go from here? I am inclined to send a letter before action to the bank and to instruct solicitors if the money is not paid to the nominated account or refunded to her account by Friday 3 March. The vendor's solicitors served a notice making time of the essence on Monday.

WestonDave

Unfortunately this does happen from time to time. You need to be aware that under Money Laundering regulations, if a transaction is deemed suspicious, it will be effectively quarantined until checks and clearance is completed. It is strictly against the law for the bank to tell you if this is the case as they would commit an offence of "tipping off". If its gone into this loop you pretty much just have to wait until it resurfaces as all the shouting and hollering won't speed it up. (Trust me!)


That said, other things you need to check are that not only the account number and sort code match the required destination but that the account name does also. I've known of transactions to disappear for a while because a word was missed out in the account name for example.


Chances are the solicitors are already doing as much as is possible to sort this out if their accounts team are up to scratch - they will have seen this before and whilst its worrying when it happens to your money, I've never known it not turn up!

davidmcn

WestonDave wrote: »

other things you need to check are that not only the account number and sort code match the required destination but that the account name does also. I've known of transactions to disappear for a while because a word was missed out in the account name for example.

Surely just the account number and sort code that matter - otherwise payments to "Bloggs & Co LLP Client Account" would keep on being bounced if they were to "Bloggs & Co", "Bloggs & Company", "Bloggs and Co", "Bloggs Solicitors", etc.

WestonDave

davidmcn wrote: »

Surely just the account number and sort code that matter - otherwise payments to "Bloggs & Co LLP Client Account" would keep on being bounced if they were to "Bloggs & Co", "Bloggs & Company", "Bloggs and Co", "Bloggs Solicitors", etc.

You'd think so - experience says that it doesn't always work like that - we had one that was the equivalent of it being sent to "Blogg & Co" that didn't automatically match and so went into the suspense account waiting for someone to manually match it. (Sort code and account number were fine).

D_M_E

As well as the correct account number and sort code, another thing to check is that the name on the receiving account was also correctly spelt - I once had a transaction held up because the bank clerk had spelt the name wrong on the recipient's account.

davidmcn

WestonDave wrote: »

You'd think so - experience says that it doesn't always work like that - we had one that was the equivalent of it being sent to "Blogg & Co" that didn't automatically match and so went into the suspense account waiting for someone to manually match it. (Sort code and account number were fine).

Ok. Sounds odd - I send and receive CHAPS payments regularly and mismatching account names have never come up as a problem.

WestonDave

To be honest I think the name thing is most likely a red herring.


If I had to put money on it there is enough in the OP to suggest a ML flag in which case it will resurface in due course with no real explanation ever offered.

simonbaughen

Thanks for all of these. I don't think there is any mispelling anywhere so it looks as if it is AML which is causing the problem, although I am surprised it is taking so long to do the checks. Luckily a family member is lending us the money to complete so we should be able to complete today but disappearing money is something of a worry. AML must screw up a few property transactions if clearance takes longer than the ten days in the failure to complete notice.

saajan_12

Ideally you send any funds coming from you (savings, other investments..) to your solicitors well in advance to avoid such issues. So the only transfers on the day of completion are between solicitors accounts (from your buyer's sols to your sols if in a chain, and from your sols to your vendor's sols).

Their account would have large sums in and out frequently, and so large transfers would be less likely to be flagged as unusual.

simonbaughen

Which bank would do the money laundering checks? Santander or Barclays, the recipient?

simonbaughen

Useful advice for cash buyers. Allow at least ten working days, maybe fifteen to be safe. I have just heard that the bank are going to resolve my daughter's case a week today, nine working days after the payment left her account.