Best banks if you have Power of Attorney

MSE_Ben_T

This thread is to discuss the

Best banks if you have Power of Attorney?

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Also see: 
Power of Attorney: Plan ahead

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Deputydan

Hopefully this forum also applies to those who are Court of Protection appointed Deputies? I manage two accounts on line (TSB and Halifax) on behalf of a relative but neither provide a facility to switch to a better rate or another bank.

paulbryden

Just a word of warning about Santander: when you invoke POA they will cancel all cheques and cards held by the Donor without giving you any option. When I did the same with Lloyds and Halifax I was given the option to allow the donor to keep some agency over their affairs. For most people this will not be an issue but I wanted my mother to still have access to money and when it was taken away unexpectedly she was very distressed. Ours was an unusual case because my mother's incapacity is intermittent. In all other respects Santander were OK although I find a big variation in competency in POA issues depending on who I talk to.

xylophone

neither provide a facility to switch to a better rate or another bank.

A switch is always initiated by the receiving bank.

Before any switch could take place, you would need to register your PoA with the receiving bank?

xylophone

Relative had PoA for his relative - he operated current accounts with Barclays and Santander as PoA as well as savings accounts with a number of providers and  a Premium Bonds account with NS&I and a stocks and shares ISA with HL.

eskbanker

paulbryden said:

Just a word of warning about Santander: when you invoke POA they will cancel all cheques and cards held by the Donor without giving you any option.

That may have been your experience but can't be extrapolated to be a generalised universal truth, as it's not mine....

soulsaver

eskbanker said:

paulbryden said:

Just a word of warning about Santander: when you invoke POA they will cancel all cheques and cards held by the Donor without giving you any option.

That may have been your experience but can't be extrapolated to be a generalised universal truth, as it's not mine....

Nor mine. The opposite, commendably efficient.

The doubt I have is what do you mean by 'invoke'?
Is there a stage where you formally tell Santander that the donor is incapable of managing their finances?

Thankfully my donor is not there, and I've not researched it, but could that bring about the resultant restrictions? 

enthusiasticsaver

I invoked the POA on accounts in my mums name this year. All remarkably efficient. 

Her main bank is Nat West and they sent me a card and cheque book and card reader and I have been able to register for online banking. No problems so far and as donor my mum is still able to operate it as normal.

She has savings with National Savings, Yorkshire Building Society and Nationwide. 

Nationwide insisted on me opening up an account in my own name to be able to operate mums online. 

I already had savings with Yorkshire BS and mums accounts show on my logon screen so mixed in with my personal savings. Ideally I would prefer that not to be the case but no big problem. 

National Savings have been straightforward. 

On all of them though I have had to change the address to mine as the attorney even though my mum still has capacity and uses the accounts (bar more complicated online transactions). It would have been nice to leave the addresses as mums but she says she only gets emails now anyway so not a problem so far. 

I have also just registered the POA with Fidelity for my mums investment portfolio. Again very simple. 

pridehappy

Myself and my parents bank with Virgin Money and Nationwide - both of which are easy to operate using POA.

My only advice is that Lloyds Banking Group and NS&I from my experience are dreadful when it comes to anything joint, in trust or POA. A lot of unnecessary documentation, conversations and loop holes to jump through to do anything. Plus, everything seems so outdated.

Gers

I had no problems at all with my now late DMs POA.

RBS - simple, got a cheque book, debit card in my name with POA on it and I could operate her account online when I was logged into mine.

Nationwide was simple too - Mum only had an ISA and a savings account which were hardly ever touched. POA logged and left until monies were needed for common repairs bill.

NSI - again, I found them very easy, probably because I already had my own accounts with them. Once the POA was lodged with them Mum's account came up on my dashboard and I could operate it very easily. On her death the PB money was sent to my nominated c/a via the online bereavment service.

Happily, I had no problems with any of these financial organisations.

sturge9

I do not know if this is the correct approach to post here, my apologies if it is not.  My wife holds an LPA jointly but not severally with her sister for their mother.  At the time of the LPA being drafted, the solicitor involved made no mention of how painful a joint, but not several, LPA actually is.  The mother banked with HSBC and getting anything done financially takes over an hour each time.  There is zero provision for both attorneys to sanction payments online so everything has to be done in person or via phone, to a call centre which like so many others is in another country, presumably to save HSBC money.  HSBC also charges £17 for transactions over £10,000 (hello care home fees).

So I wanted to ask whether anybody knows of a bank that has invested in the necessary on-line facilities where both attorneys can log-in separately to sanction a payment, since HSBC has no provision for this, no apparent plans to implement any and implements charges that frankly hit the bank account of an old woman in a care home, surely one of the most vulnerable in society?

Any thoughts or advice gratefully received.