Bank changing account holder's name without permission

Roborovski

My wife has had a Halifax passbook account for over 30 years. It was the only account she did not change her name on when we got married 26 years ago, and she has since used it to deposit occasional cheques made payable to her maiden name. Recently, she tried to pay in one such cheque but the branch refused stating that they had changed the account to her married name without her consent, to be in line with another accoiunt which she holds with them,.Does anyone know if this is standard practice in the banking industry?

masonic

It varies by bank, see: https://www.savvywoman.co.uk/2015/07/married-and-maiden-names-on-your-bank-accounts-can-you-do-this/

eskbanker

I can see how that could be useful for her but conversely can also understand how the amount of regulatory change in the financial services industry (Know Your Customer, for example) during that period, as well as GDPR/DPA obligations to keep personal data accurate, would make it harder to justify retaining multiple identities for the same person.  I wouldn't necessarily have expected them to seek her consent as such but would have thought it would be appropriate to notify her that they were doing this.

SamDude

Something similar happend with me. I have accounts with Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland account and when I opened them, I used different email addresses for each so I could filter the emails - my personal name/address/phone details were the same for all of them.

At some point, without warning or communication, all of my email addresses were 'updated' to my Halifax email contact. I only became aware when BoS and Lloyds emails were appearing in my Halifax email folder.
I raised this with each of the complaints teams, but they all came back and said it was in their standard procedure to share information and update customer information within the LBG.
I wasn't (and still not) happy with this, but felt it was too much to chase further.