Piles of bank statements!

eskbanker

ratechaser wrote: »

Lordy, and I thought Mrs RC was bonkers for keeping her first (and still main) bank account's statements back to the 80s. She's convinced that she's viewed as a better credit risk for maintaining the same account for 32 years. Uh huh :rotfl:

Continuity of longstanding accounts is generally viewed as a positive factor within a credit history, assuming the account is visible there (some old accounts predate the standardised collation of such data). However, either way round, there's no value in retaining statements for this purpose....

Herbyme

Having had current accounts for 40 years, I can honestly say that no organisation has ever asked to see them. The only exception is that I once had a VAT inspection, I am self-employed. If you have a specific reason to keep them in order to prove certain things, that would be different I would think that nowadays, GDPR means that we are all entitled to any bank statements because they are our personal data

Flobberchops

Although I certainly haven't kept years of bank statements (and certainly not for closed accounts) I do occasionally hear horror stories where the local council/government/Visa Office has demanded original statements from years back. Go digital? Great, if you just want the data for your own budgeting purposes, but often the same bureaucratic organisations that are asking for proof of address from 1991 will insist on original paper documents.



Working in branch we have statement printing machines that provide "digitally stamped" documents; we were assured this Digital Stamp was developed in partnership with the Home Office and would be universally recognised. In practice? I have had customers come back to me saying the Home Office didn't recognise it, wanted original statements in colour, required a member of staff to sign each page, etc. We have systems that retain digital copies of all correspondence for at least six years. It's not uncommon for this to be insufficient for customer requests - usually relating to probate, residency, and so on.


As I mentioned, I'm personally doing the paper-trail equivalent of driving without a seatbelt and just binning or shredding most paperwork that comes my way. I hope that's not something I'll come to regret; but I think it's a common complaint that the UK currently has no recognised, standardised method of verifying digital documents.