Nationwide Closure Of Small Charity and Club Accounts

dave.l.

It was reported on a previous MSE thread published in 2019 that Nationwide were in the process of finalising the closure of around 79,000 Treasures Trust accounts many of which were reported to be Dormant.

If you were associated with any of these unincorporated clubs could you please confirm if Nationwide returned your funds in the same name of the association in which the account was held ( and whose name all deposits were taken) or were these funds returned to one of your individual signatories of that account?

In the case of the organisation which I am a member, Nationwide are unable to produce any evidence of writing to either the organisation itself or any of its signatories advising that the account was to be closed. A cheque with a value of five figures was then reputed to have been written out ( no mention of it being dispatched by secure means) payable to one of our signatories  ( not the first named on the account) . This cheque he advised never arrived at his registered address and as he nor anyone else had requested the closure he wasn’t expecting it. The cheque is said to have been sent 17 months after the society closed the account and which appears not to have included any interest covering that period. No contact was made with us before or during that extended period of time.

This was a savings account not a current account and our organisation only found out about the closure when visiting the societies local branch several years later. We had been happy leaving it there untouched gaining interest and regarded the funds to be safely deposited.

Nationwide have since told us the account was closed because it was “Latent” . This not appear to be a banking term but the word is interchangeable with “Dormant “ . According to the societies website an account is dormant if no transactions have taken place for 15 years. Our association deposited a high value cheque into this account 19 months before it was closed so it is difficult to see how it could be regarded as such.
The signatory concerned has since voluntary provided copies of his bank statements to the society and the matter referred to Action Fraud. The bank mandate that the individual signed clearly stated that 2 signatures were required for any withdrawal to avoid any signatories potentially paying themselves but then the society acted in a way to pay him directly without anyones knowledge or authority in contravention of that mandate.

We still hold the account passbook showing the funds to be in the account but Nationwide have clearly stated that having written a cheque they are no longer liable even though it wasn’t made payable in the “Account Name” in which it was opened. They, due to the passage of time , are unable to confirm if the cheque left there building, if it was lost in the post as many thousands of letters are or if it fact the cheque was cashed or not.  

Obviously we would like our monies back especially when we read that the society is holding onto millions of unclaimed funds.

Our associations contact details and that of our key personal have always been easily available to view and if we had been notified of the intended closure of the account we would have asked for the funds to be returned to our nominated account and not by a cheque send by ordinary post to a random signatory.

If you have had similar experiences please share them.

[Deleted User]

Given it would have been a counter type cheque, the club account would have been debited then the club account closed when it was issued (a standard cheque would be debited once deposited only).

I'm not sure why they can't trace it via the closed club account, their counter cheque issuing account or their records of the cheques themselves as they can search by the value of the counter cheque even with no other information.

penners324

Raise a complaint to Nationwide. Then if no success lodge a complaint with financial Ombudsman