Accessing charity bank accounts with unknown signatories

rcave28

Hello! I'm a newly appointed Treasurer of a charity and I'm reaching the end of my tether trying to access our NatWest bank account! This particular account has been dormant for many iterations of trustees, to the point that no-one knows who the signatories are. Understandably, NatWest are unable to disclose this but they have also informed me they will not make contact with the signatories to put us in touch. The bank account is in the name of the charity, statements are sent monthly to our registered charity address and myself and the existing trustees are listed on the Charity Commission website but NatWest cannot do anything with this without a directive from an existing mystery signatory.

Does anyone have expertise/experience/any other suggestions we could try? I'm very bitter that our charitable funds are seemingly being held hostage by a bank. Previous Trustees worked hard for that money and our beneficiaries are being denied the privileges that the funds could unlock for them, but we are at a stalemate. 

theoretica

Do you have past accounts? (If not, maybe the Charity Commission can help)  Can you look back through them to see when the account was last used and who would have been Treasurer then?  Or will NatWest give you the date of the last payment out?

Savvy_Sue

Signatories should have been recorded in minutes of meetings: when I have changed these I have always had to sign a form provided by the bank which said something along the lines of "at a meeting of the trustees on X date it was agreed to appoint the following ..." 

You may not be surprised to learn that the minutes may sometimes have recorded this fact after the event, but if you can access previous minutes then that's a starting point. 

Next is looking for 'the usual suspects': these would normally (for me) be Treasurer, Chair, Secretary and a.n.other (because I like to have 'any two of four to sign'. Are you able to approach previous trustees to enquire if they were ever signatories? 

Then there is the cheque book: sometimes signatories will initial the stub - that's a more forlorn hope to me, but a possibility. 

If you make no progress with these, your final hunt is for the accounts as filed on the charity commission website: these will list all the trustees each year, I believe. 

rcave28

Savvy_Sue said:

Signatories should have been recorded in minutes of meetings: when I have changed these I have always had to sign a form provided by the bank which said something along the lines of "at a meeting of the trustees on X date it was agreed to appoint the following ..." 

You may not be surprised to learn that the minutes may sometimes have recorded this fact after the event, but if you can access previous minutes then that's a starting point. 

Next is looking for 'the usual suspects': these would normally (for me) be Treasurer, Chair, Secretary and a.n.other (because I like to have 'any two of four to sign'. Are you able to approach previous trustees to enquire if they were ever signatories? 

Then there is the cheque book: sometimes signatories will initial the stub - that's a more forlorn hope to me, but a possibility. 

If you make no progress with these, your final hunt is for the accounts as filed on the charity commission website: these will list all the trustees each year, I believe. 

Thanks so much, we have not been given any minutes from the previous Trustees but I will ask our new Secretary to have a look around the charity commission website to see if we can hunt down any past records. I think the account might pre-date official charitable registration though.
We have our first meeting planned for Monday to formally minute our own decisions so hopefully this will not be an issue going forward!

Savvy_Sue

Few more questions which may give me (and DH) fresh suggestions: answer what you feel able to, I'm just throwing them all out here now as I think of them.

DH's immediate reaction to this was that although the bank are probably doing a 'data protection' exercise, not being willing to contact current signatories is unreasonable in this situation. Have you tried escalating this question upwards? 

How much is in the account, for how long has it been dormant, and what are the reasons it has lain dormant?

You say dormant through 'many iterations' of trustees - what mechanism was used for appointing trustees? Were the most recent trustees involved in your appointment, for example, or has there been a break?

When did formal charity registration take place? What led to 'resurrection'?

Any idea what the source of the funds is? Sometimes there can be a paper trail there. 

Do you have an 'umbrella body'? (I ask this because I'm in a group which is formally affiliated to a couple of national organisations.)

Do you have a local volunteer organisation to which you are, or could be, affiliated? (Google volunteer plus your town / city / county / area.) They might have met this situation before - we know one chap who had been merrily signing cheques on behalf of a charity until he went into the bank one day to ask a question and was told he was NOT a signatory! Apparently a mandate to change signatories had not been properly actioned some years earlier, and as a result the signatories were woefully out of date, which took a while to untangle. 

By the way, you shouldn't have to track down all the previous signatories. The form for changing them - at least last time I used it - didn't require them all to be notified. Mind you, I have just looked at the NatWest form, and I'm not sure you can comply with its requirements, since none of the previous signatories are currently Trustees, so I'd check that with them - I could be misreading it.  

Ash_Pole

This is a frustrating one and I would be interested in knowing if you are getting anywhere rcave28.

If the bank account predates the charity becoming registered, then what legal form did the organisation have at the time? All I'm thinking is that if it was unincorporated then the bank accounts could effectively be in the names of individuals and the funds really are their funds, in which case I can understand this from the viewpoint of NatWest.

Have you tried contacting the Charity Commission helpline and seeing if they can help?

Skint_n_clueless

Hi rcave28

I had a similar experience myself where I work as a management accountant for a charity. There have been so many members of staff come and go that I could not give NatWest the exact details. I explained the situation and that we'd be lucky if anyone listed was still working with us.

Perhaps the person I spoke to was in a helpful mood that day, who knows, but I was able to get the names of the signatories on the account. Understandably they would not share contact details, but at least I had more information to work off.

From there I have also requested forms for us to update the mandate as well as take the account online.

At the end of the day, without getting access to the account, how is one supposed to monitor the activity, close the account etc without at least a little assistance from the bank? I know GDPR is a huge barrier in these cases, but there has to be some give and take.

Good luck!

unlucky67

Coming very late to this  but maybe it will help someone else in a similar situation. I had the same issue with Nationwide (it was our 'contingency fund' which we paid in small amounts by standing order every month) and it was a nightmare. 

It is an account with a book and it has the authorised signatories in the front of the book  -but they are 'invisible' to the naked eye and they wouldn't give me any information about them.

I later found out that a new book had been issued and it didn't have any signatures in as they would update them when the signatures were changed, otherwise they run out of space...doesn't help in your case but would have told me the signatories were last changed before the first date in that book.   

I started phoning people who had been associated with the charity over the years - getting leads to other people I could contact. I was looking for past chairs, treasurers and secretaries (and financial administrators). No one remembered changing the signatories (which involved a trip into the branch) until finally I found someone who remembered going into the bank.

Nationwide wouldn't give out any details (data protection) to the point that when I gave them the name of the person I found they wouldn't confirm or deny if they were a signatory.  I had to get that person to complete a change of signatory mandate (Nationwide did make the  concession that they would accept one signatory rather than 2 'required' to add new signatories)

I took the mandate into the branch with a letter from the committee confirming we wished to change the signatories, my id etc (I have a personal account with nationwide -don't know if that helped or not -also I am listed as our main trustee with OSCR - scotttish charity regulator and my name appears on their website associated with the charity.)

They accepted the mandate - eventually - they didn't make the changes immediately. I'm not sure if the person who signed was actually one of the latest signatories - but it worked.

I would say on the telephone they were really unhelpful - in person in the branch they were more helpful.

Now I keep a record of the signatories on the accounts in the front of our banking folder   - as well as get them minuted-  and take change of signatory mandates to our AGMs so I can get one completed by anyone who steps down.

I hope it worked out for you ...  I don't know what would have happened if I couldn't get anyone to sign a mandate.