Can I find out who a bank account belongs to?

alanq

Wills can be lodged with the Probate Service for a one-off fee of £20.


https://formfinder.hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/pa7-eng.pdf

Armorica

in terms of the payment - you don't need to know the owner of the account, it's still the same owner.

1) Speak to your bank and tell them the payment has been made to a company in administration, and ask if they can find out why the funds haven't been returned unapplied (which they should have been if the account was frozen)

2) find out the appointed administrator/insolvency practitioner and ask them to return the funds. NB: sometimes a company can still be operated in administration and/or sold to another company.

jonesMUFCforever

Armorica wrote: »

in terms of the payment - you don't need to know the owner of the account, it's still the same owner.

1) Speak to your bank and tell them the payment has been made to a company in administration, and ask if they can find out why the funds haven't been returned unapplied (which they should have been if the account was frozen)

2) find out the appointed administrator/insolvency practitioner and ask them to return the funds. NB: sometimes a company can still be operated in administration and/or sold to another company.

1) Standing orders are where you the customer tells the bank to send money from your account to someone else' account. The bank would quite rightly tell you to do one as it it is nothing to do with them.
2) I agree with you.

knightfox

if this is a company have you looked on company house records and seen what happened to company, this should included records of liquidation.

what about the directors what are they doing now, are they still company directors

Armorica

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

1) Standing orders are where you the customer tells the bank to send money from your account to someone else' account. The bank would quite rightly tell you to do one as it it is nothing to do with them.
2) I agree with you.

I know what a standing order is and how it works thanks. And would still suggest asking the bank given the recipient has apparently been in administration for a number of years.

In this case, I wouldn't expect the customer to be provided detailed information, but it is possible for a conversation to take place between the banks, or for the OP's bank to check their records.

It's important to ask this question. In this situation, the most likely course of action would have been for the company's accounts to be frozen or closed. And then the OP's bank should have had the standing order funds returned. For some reason, this simply hasn't happened.

There are a range of possibilities, but nothing the OP can resolve other than investigating on the 'trying to identify what happened to the company' side. The company being taken over is one option and so not being wound up. The company having used personal accounts is another.

If the OP is happy to share the name of the company, I'm sure someone here could do the research on its legal fate.

It's also possible it was actually a Direct Debit or a Continuous Payment Authority. But that seems unlikely given the clarity of the OP's posting.

EarthBoy

Armorica wrote: »

in terms of the payment - you don't need to know the owner of the account, it's still the same owner.

1) Speak to your bank and tell them the payment has been made to a company in administration, and ask if they can find out why the funds haven't been returned unapplied (which they should have been if the account was frozen)

The OP's bank will only be able to tell the OP whether the funds have been returned or not. If they haven't been returned, they won't be able to say why they haven't been returned. Only the recipient bank will know the answer to that question. Unless both accounts are with the same bank.

Armorica

EarthBoy wrote: »

The OP's bank will only be able to tell the OP whether the funds have been returned or not. If they haven't been returned, they won't be able to say why they haven't been returned. Only the recipient bank will know the answer to that question. Unless both accounts are with the same bank.

I know it doesn't always seem like it - but banks are actually capable of sometimes talking to each other.

18cc

If you make a payment from your bank account either by faster payments or by standing order and the recipient bank account has been closed then the money will bounce back there needs to be no involvement manually by any bank concerned

the fact that the payments have not bounced back that means that the account is still valid and open

the op could find out from the sort code which bank and in particular which branch it represents (or group of branches sometimes these days) and then call them direct and see if they will help you no guarantees though because of data protection

Armorica

18cc wrote: »

If you make a payment from your bank account either by faster payments or by standing order and the recipient bank account has been closed then the money will bounce back there needs to be no involvement manually by any bank concerned

the fact that the payments have not bounced back that means that the account is still valid and open

the op could find out from the sort code which bank and in particular which branch it represents (or group of branches sometimes these days) and then call them direct and see if they will help you no guarantees though because of data protection

No, that's pointless - they won't be able to help, as you say, because of data protection.

This kind of conversation must take place between the two banks. Even then DPA can still prevent anything useful happening - but it should be possible for the two banks to have a conversation to identify what has/hasn't happened and whether either set of procedures have gone awry without getting into customer specifics.

grayfly

Thanks again for the feedback.

I contacted my own bank to find out if there's anything they can do, basically no.

I know where the money was being sent to, a Barclays bank. They can't help due to data protection.

A quick search on Companies House shows that the Directors of the old company set up another company which is in a different sector. They don't do wills anymore, which is no surprise.

I will contact them to find out what happened, although I doubt very much they will respond.