New Charges on Charity bank accounts with HSBC

Herbalus

spenderdave said:

Note that many of those involved in this change are ordinary clubs and societies, NOT charities. All 'community' accounts are moving to this 'charity' account regardless.These, although maybe not the best knowledgeable are hardly large turnover concerns and don't go begging for money. Ours has a turnover of around £500 a year, the £60 fees is a lot of our turnover so we will have no option but to move.

One other change is the move of a considerable number of HSBC branches to their new 'digital' format, the most significant change being the removal of in-branch counters. Our church is now unable to pay cash into our account there as being a charity with dual signatures we do not have a debit card to use their paying in machines or for that matter the Post Office.

You can ask for a deposit card which will facilitate cash deposits at machines and post office. It doesn’t allow withdrawals, only deposits. Will get around the dual signatory issue. 

rarrarrar

Whatever you do give yourself plenty of time to sort out the issues with opening a new bank account: e.g. ID requirements for all signatures and possibly "officers" of the club, copy of the constitution etc.

4caster

I have been treasurer for a small Anglican Church for the last 25 years, and have never paid bank charges, so would like to switch. We require all cheques or other withdrawals to be approved by two people. It is a safeguard against fraud, and protects me from allegations of fraud, so I don't want to have sole authority to withdraw all the funds. As far as I know, no bank has any mechanism to get online payments approved online by another signatory.
Santander requires only one signature for withdrawals, and they don't even say that they will provide a cheque book.
Lloyds is not processing Switches at present except for personal accounts.
TSB says it is not opening new charity accounts at present.
I almost completed a Switch to NatWest, but they want proof that our 600-year-old Anglican Church is a registered Place of Worship, in the form of a Form 76, certified by a solicitor, accountant or notary, and confirmed by the Superintendent Registrar as having been duly recorded by the General Register Office as a place of meeting for Religious Worship in accordance with The Places of Worship Registration Act 1855. No-one from the Rural Dean downwards has ever heard of that form.
So we are stuck with the HSBC charges unless this can be resolved.
I have great faith in Martin Lewis and MSE, and hope that you can advise small charities like ours.

4caster

IanManc said:

@4caster the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 doesn't apply to the Church of England or its premises, so that's why your rural dean has never heard of it.

Have you considered Barclays? They have a community account which is available to churches:

Community Account | Barclays

Thank you for this information. I'll check exactly what it says and tell NatWest. I could try Barclays, but am also Clerk to the Parish Council, and we had a lot of trouble with Barclays when we wanted to change a signatory. They kept losing the application. It took a year and a half, and in the end all four of us had to visit the Branch together to sort it out.

General_Grant

4caster said:

I have been treasurer for a small Anglican Church for the last 25 years, and have never paid bank charges, so would like to switch. We require all cheques or other withdrawals to be approved by two people. It is a safeguard against fraud, and protects me from allegations of fraud, so I don't want to have sole authority to withdraw all the funds. As far as I know, no bank has any mechanism to get online payments approved online by another signatory.
Santander requires only one signature for withdrawals, and they don't even say that they will provide a cheque book.
Lloyds is not processing Switches at present except for personal accounts.
TSB says it is not opening new charity accounts at present.
I almost completed a Switch to NatWest, but they want proof that our 600-year-old Anglican Church is a registered Place of Worship, in the form of a Form 76, certified by a solicitor, accountant or notary, and confirmed by the Superintendent Registrar as having been duly recorded by the General Register Office as a place of meeting for Religious Worship in accordance with The Places of Worship Registration Act 1855. No-one from the Rural Dean downwards has ever heard of that form.
So we are stuck with the HSBC charges unless this can be resolved.
I have great faith in Martin Lewis and MSE, and hope that you can advise small charities like ours.

I am the treasurer of a charity and use CAF Bank - which does require authorisation from two people.  (One sets up the payment and the second confirms payment - requiring log-in and codes to mobile phone.)  Fee is £6/month and there are additional charges if you pay in a lot of cheques.

spenderdave

Looks like the Methodist church doesn't like these charges:
https://www.methodist.org.uk/about-us/news/latest-news/all-news/methodist-church-urges-hsbc-to-drop-new-charges/

MatthewHutton

MoJoeGo said:

It might sound absurd to those of you involved in running small charities, but they are generally regarded as amongst the highest risk types of customer that a bank can have. 

Limited regulation and governance, often run by relative amateurs (however well meaning) with little financial experience, taking in often significant untraceable amounts of cash from many donors, often for the stated benefit of other people in 'developing' countries. And plenty of situations where the money has actually ended up in the hands of corrupt politicians or terrorists. With the further issues of tax fraud and money laundering thrown in for good measure.

Unfortunately for the banks, it's a bit of a minefield, and the amount of expensive and regular due diligence they have to do makes charities not their favourite type of client. It's not personal, it's just (regulated) business.

The people this affects most are people who run an old peoples tea and cake club at the village hall or the local football team.

And their expenses are like £20/week for renting the village hall plus some tea bags, some instant coffee a pint of milk and some sugar. And their overall turnover is ~£1k/year.

Maybe they should be able to get an account which doesn’t allow international payments, and maybe one that limits turnover to £10k a year for free not £100k.

And maybe the AML rules should be less strict for charities and clubs with a turnover below £10k.

jbuchanangb

In the past I have been the treasurer of an Anglican Parish and the chairman on an unincorporated association, both of which banked with Barclays, and in both cases we were able to perform online banking with one signatory creating a payment transaction and another authorising it. The accounts were known as Community Accounts. Barclays even coped with the fact that I was an online signatory on two completely unrelated accounts!
I accept that there was cumbersome bureaucracy in establishing the mechanism with all the necessary approvals of signatories, login mechanisms and so on, but once it was done it worked OK. I am now a member of a church which is a registered charity, and a company limited by guarantee, which banks with Lloyds and has a workable process for dual signatory authorisations for online payments. So solutions are out there.