Bank closed our account

Bob_Sapey

I am part of a small mental health charity with a turnover of less than £500 a year. We had a Treasurers Account with Nationwide, but recently they have closed it saying they no longer offer this service. We tried to move to Lloyds but they wont accept transferred accounts. I checked with the Bank of Scotland and they say something similar on their recorded phone message. I appreciate that with a very small amount of money we are not an attractive customer, but we do have some income and need an account to receive it. What can we do?

Savvy_Sue

So can you get any money out? I'm thinking rather than transferring the account, could you pay some money into a new account, and then move the rest manually?

Ask your Independent Examiner? 

For registered charities, there's Triodos, CAF and Unity Trust. Sorry I'm on my phone, and links are hard work ....

Savvy_Sue

Now on the PC:

https://www.triodos.co.uk/charity

https://www.cafonline.org/charities

https://www.unity.co.uk/business-current-accounts/

All of these would offer you some way of paying in or withdrawing cash locally, if that's a need. Cheques you would probably pay in by post. Online banking with dual authorisation is also standard. Worth asking if they can offer a switching service. 

Don't worry that you haven't heard of them: they are not high street banks but they do offer accounts for charities.  

Robin9

May not be free - CAF is now £8 / month plus 50p / cheque

Bob_Sapey

We found out that the FCA advised banks to reduce the number of small charity accounts they have, so we're a victim of that. 
Looks like we can get an account with Virgin, but will need a 3rd signatory. In the meantime we'll have to pay tax on one income stream as it will have to be paid to an individual.

Savvy_Sue

Robin9 said:

May not be free - CAF is now £8 / month plus 50p / cheque

Ah, yes, I don't know what the charges are like for any of them. It may well be necessary to change how things are done, if the way they've been done until now is not cost effective with a new bank. (Main account at work is with Unity Trust: there is a charge for each outgoing BACS transaction. We have one supplier producing individual invoices for each piece of work done, and they'd like us to pay each invoice separately - err, no, not unless you want to bear the cost of the BACS transactions!)

Bob_Sapey said:

We found out that the FCA advised banks to reduce the number of small charity accounts they have, so we're a victim of that. 

That must, in some ways, be a relief - accounts have been closed on suspicion of fraud, money laundering etc, and explanations are not given in such circumstances! I didn't like to ask ... 

Bob_Sapey said:

Looks like we can get an account with Virgin, but will need a 3rd signatory. 

Is that 'a 3rd signatory for all transactions' or 'a 3rd signatory where we've only ever had 2'? If the latter, I've never wanted to operate with fewer than 4, any 2 to sign. It's all too easy for someone to fall ill / move away / distance themselves from the organisation. Currently at work we have 4, where we've previously had 6. One of the 4 usually WFH, and it has sometimes been tricky to find A.N.Other to countersign something! 

My most recent foray into treasurership came about because I said I'd shadow someone who'd been doing it for aeons. They had a stroke, could no longer sign, and I was 'raised up' immediately. Only one person was needed to sign cheques, but the only other signatory was no longer active in the club. At my first committee meeting we changed that, as a condition of me taking over ... 

Bob_Sapey said:

In the meantime we'll have to pay tax on one income stream as it will have to be paid to an individual.

I'm not sure I understand that bit. Don't feel you have to explain ...

Bob_Sapey

We had far too little money to be laundering 😂.

As a group we did some work for a university, training students. When they pay an individual they automatically deduct tax and NI, but if they'd been able to pay the organisation, we'd have got the full sum.