Old saving accounts with Britannia and Abbey

jpo74

Hello all,
I've found a couple of building society books for building societies that no longer exist in their old names; Britannia and Abbey National.

There's not a huge amount of money in each account but I'd still like to recover it.

Is this possible?

EarthBoy

Britannia was taken over by Co-operative Bank and Abbey National is now Santander. Take the books into their branches and ask them.

andi2

I took the kids Britannia books into the Co-op a couple of years ago & came out with cheques for the closure balances. Easy to do - didn't take too long & they were able to do it at the counter.

aj23_2

I'd take ID with you though.

bowlhead99

aj23 wrote: »

I'd take ID with you though.

Or simply go armed with some feigned outrage at the bank or building society's identification procedures. Based on what I typically see when visiting a branch, there are a lot of customers who think that will be just as good as having ID.

Then they come on this forum and moan about the terrible customer services you get these days...

aj23_2

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Or simply go armed with some feigned outrage at the bank or building society's identification procedures. Based on what I typically see when visiting a branch, there are a lot of customers who think that will be just as good as having ID.

Then they come on this forum and moan about the terrible customer services you get these days...

I don't know why, we all know when withdrawing from an old account some kind of ID will be needed.

redux

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Or simply go armed with some feigned outrage at the bank or building society's identification procedures. Based on what I typically see when visiting a branch, there are a lot of customers who think that will be just as good as having ID.

Then they come on this forum and moan about the terrible customer services you get these days...

When I closed my old Britannia account, a disused ex monthly saver, I went with 4 ID and address documents and some old statements. I was there for 20 minutes and was asked several initially relevant or heading towards general chat questions, why was I closing the account etc, while (I later discovered, with some surprise) he did a full online credit and money laundering check, all for the sake of my modest about £180.

I thought money laundering questions might be more normal on opening not closing.

What is the source of these funds? It's there in my account with you, and now I'm withdrawing it. Why? You can see the interest rate isn't attractive any more, and I should have got around to doing this years ago. What are you going to do with the money? Does that matter? Assuming you give me a cheque, in a bank straight away, then I might spend it or it might go in a monthly saver at another building society. Which? I don't think you are obliged to ask or record an answer for that question.

I wondered about later objecting to the credit check, as I hadn't asked to borrow money, but I couldn't be bothered.

bowlhead99

redux wrote: »

I thought money laundering questions might be more normal on opening not closing.

If you were a money launderer or terrorist you would be grateful that the Co-op might have taken over some old customer accounts from Britannia without anyone having done any AML checking to current standards and were willing to let their owners walk off with the contents of them without ever going through a proper check. So, they might well want to do their checks to stop that.

Obviously the questions designed for a new customer to let them know where the funds are from or how they might be used, are going to be rather less valuable But if they let the frontline staff ask their own made-up questions and do their own risk assessments they are going to find it difficult to keep everything aligned to the central framework.

I wondered about later objecting to the credit check, as I hadn't asked to borrow money, but I couldn't be bothered.

As long as it wasn't an actual recorded application for credit, and just using the CRA central files to help wrap up the ID checking, there is no harm done and nothing really to complain about: it's easier than asking you to go and dig out more documents to prove things yourself.