Bank staff. What do passbooks tell you?

cappyston · 4 February 2019 at 10:20PM

Hi there - if I need to post elsewhere instead of here, please say.

Nutshell: In branch, how much information can bank staff gain from a passbook and its transactions? Can they obtain historical information about the account info from other bank systems too?

Background - long, sorry: My dad's private pension and his other ad hoc cash deposits have been going into a saver reward Halifax account accessed by a passbook. It's a joint account with his uncle going back to the 80s: dad is 82, his uncle even older.

Dad is wheelchair bound and lives very frugally, with no other family apart from his uncle and me and I'm not local. It's why they set up the account, in case my uncle needed additional support from dad, but in reality despite living a couple miles apart, they haven't spoken for years as they don't get really get on. His uncle had a stroke sometime back and has not been great since.

Due to a minor £5ish error by Halifax back in the 80s/90s they had asked for the 'joint' element of the account to be revoked - and they thought this had happened. It didn't. (Old school - they thought someone telling them this meant it happened. Now transpires both simply scored the other's name out in the front of their individual passbooks, thinking over the years that this was an error!).

My dad has been the only one depositing funds and his uncle has now recently withdrawn all the funds (some 10s of thousands of pounds) and closed the acct without dad's prior consent or knowledge, leaving dad having to prove it was 'his', so to speak - yes I know that technically as a joint acct any party can lay claim, but we're relying on goodwill from uncle and his niece (possible POA) who's conceded that with dad's proof it will have to be paid back. We're waiting for the pensions company to confirm that they made the monthly pensions payments for the last 17 years.

I found a passbook going back to 1998 - 2004 and the latest one was 2016 to 2019 before closing. Can't find the ones from the intervening 12 years, as dad said that for security he didn't want to keep too much financial info in the house, just his latest passbook, so I was fortunate to find the one going back to 1998.

So for our evidence gathering I wondered what other account information bank staff can access with a passbook? Branch details of cash deposits and withdrawals? Info on who's book was presented? Can details on the account be found on bank databases elsewhere, not just the passbook?

I need to ensure I'm asking the right questions of Halifax, especially as it seems that whilst dad was depositing over the years, there were years when many deposits (totalling more tens of thousands) were also made, although he's loath to chasing that now.

There's so many other issues e.g the bank's responsibility to vulnerable customers, poss financial abuse of my great uncle etc, but my focus here is on the bank's record keeping.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

jonnygee2 · 4 February 2019 at 10:49PM

Can details on the account be found on bank databases elsewhere, not just the passbook?

Yes, they have an internal ledger of transactions. Even if I somehow knew exactly what this looked like, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell you.

As a first step your dad could submit a subject access request to find all of the information held on himself. And, submit a complaint to them too, which will force them to investigate.

But, honestly, I don't know what you are trying to achieve. The bank has no liability here, and no power to recover the money form the uncle.

If anything it looks like a matter for the courts, if you want evidence for this, a SAR is the best way to go.