TSB BANK - Can they take money from someone with Dementia... as long as they send a letter annually

Topsy1970

In August 2022, I was made aware that my in-laws Jim (84 years old and in and out of hospital – Passed away November 2023) and Joan (87 years old with Dementia) had been paying £15 per month for a gold JOINT bank account with the TSB since February 2003.    In nearly 20 years they had tried to use the benefits of this account 3 times, but it was refused due a pre-known medical condition (Angus), that the TSB were aware off prior to this account being opened.

The last time they had tried to use the benefits of this account:   14th January 2008.    

Financial Ombudsman ruling:

The TSB had performed duty of care over the tenure, by sending letters.  They had no responsibility to follow up with a phone call when benefits were not used.   That sole responsibility was with the customer.

The Financial Ombudsman then advised that despite all the documentation being sent to [Removed by Forum Team] (with Dementia), they both still had the cognitive brain power from 2003 to fully understand that they could have moved back to a free account.    

So, it was solely their fault they were still paying, for 15 years since last thinking about using it.

I find it hard to believe after the PIP scandal that banks do not require to perform duty of care, especially for people with Mental health issues, Dementia or just getting old.

DullGreyGuy

Topsy1970 said:

In August 2022, I was made aware that my in-laws Jim (84 years old and in and out of hospital – Passed away November 2023) and Joan (87 years old with Dementia) had been paying £15 per month for a gold JOINT bank account with the TSB since February 2003.    In nearly 20 years they had tried to use the benefits of this account 3 times, but it was refused due a pre-known medical condition (Angus), that the TSB were aware off prior to this account being opened.

The last time they had tried to use the benefits of this account:   14th January 2008.    

Financial Ombudsman ruling:

The TSB had performed duty of care over the tenure, by sending letters.  They had no responsibility to follow up with a phone call when benefits were not used.   That sole responsibility was with the customer.

The Financial Ombudsman then advised that despite all the documentation being sent to [Removed by Forum Team] (with Dementia), they both still had the cognitive brain power from 2003 to fully understand that they could have moved back to a free account.    

So, it was solely their fault they were still paying, for 15 years since last thinking about using it.

I find it hard to believe after the PIP scandal that banks do not require to perform duty of care, especially for people with Mental health issues, Dementia or just getting old.

Try stating your last comment to a room full of pensioners, I suggest you wear armour or at least heavily padded clothing. You are quickly into discrimination territory if you assume all people that are getting old are not competent or should be treated differently. You will find many posts on here of people going to the Ombudsman as they feel they've been forced through additional checks because of their age when wanting to pay a new payee or withdraw large sums of money. 



Paying for a benefit gives you the opportunity to use it, doesn't oblige you to use it. A bank will simply not know if someone who has free travel insurance and breakdown cover is travelling a lot and making no claims or not travelling at all, similarly if they have a reliable car or dont have a car.  Some have a "Gold account" simply so they can tell others they have a "Gold account" and dont use any of the benefits. 

Presumably if both your parents lacked capacity then someone had Power of Attorney to make decisions for them... where was that person in considering if the benefits were still worth while?

elsien

As above, a dementia diagnosis does not automatically mean that someone lacks capacity around their finances. Many people with dementia do carry on managing independently for a fair amount of time.
and although your father-in-law was in and out of hospital, you don’t reference that he had any capacity issues so he could have asked for support with making any changes.

And if they were aware during the 20 years that the account was open before they became unwell of the terms and conditions of the account and that they couldn’t use the benefits of the account, there was nothing to stop them from closing it then. 

At the point that MIL did lose capacity presumably someone else would have been managing the finances using a power of attorney or deputyship. So the responsibility and monitoring the accounts would  then fall on them. 

If there was a question about capacity when the account was opened then you might have a stronger argument but it would seem that when the account was opened and they tried to subsequently access the benefits both parties knew what they were doing and chose to stay with the account. Which is their prerogative.

born_again

Banks do not provide or know who is using the benefits of these accounts. As any claim is direct with the insurer.

When is that ruling from?

Going to take it that husband did not have Dementia, so why was it never cancelled pre 2023?
From then did anyone have PoA on his wife?
Realise & then stop the payments. 

Sadly this is one where personal responsibility is front & foremost As FOS  have ruled.

elsien

Further to that you are playing on your in-laws age now but they were only in their early 60s when they opened it? 

Malthusian

DullGreyGuy said:

Presumably if both your parents lacked capacity then someone had Power of Attorney to make decisions for them... where was that person in considering if the benefits were still worth while?

I would add that if I was the Attorney for John and Jean (or Angus and [Removed by Forum Team], or Tom and Ricki, or whatever they're called) that I probably wouldn't have closed their Gold account for a cheaper one. Because a) the risk of disrupting the day-to-day finances of vulnerable adults is probably not going to be worth the saving, b) as it is not clearly against their interests to keep the existing account, the duty to manage their finances as they would themselves comes into play. And they wanted a Gold account. 

People pay lots of money just to call their NatWest account a Coutts account. The fact they couldn't benefit from the travel insurance does not in itself mean that they didn't want a TSB Gold account.

I see no reason to believe the Ombudsman has made a mistake.

Topsy1970

When the POA was in place that is when the £15 per month fee was noticed.      As we all know, Dementia is disease that slowly debilitates the individual so in the early stages they can manage their own finances, but that unfortunately does not last long, in the experience I am now seeing.     

I get the fact that when we pay for something, it is up to us whether we use it....   I just feel that banks should have some responsibility to 'talk' to people about their account every 3 - 5 years or make the customer renew their account as we currently do with home / car insurance.    

Also, not everyone has someone to be their POA or indeed family to look after them.     Surely a bank, that they have been with for years and years has some duty of care.

In addition, and again it is a personal belief, I do think there should be rules to protect us as we get older, whether we need to use them or not.     In a similar way I believe there should be rules to protect young people on social media, whether they need it or not.

Being Flippant (so please nobody take offence), but should these people have known better.    

go to the edinburgh evening news and type 

Edinburgh crime: Couple with Alzheimer's tricked by man posing as electrician with money stolen

This is why I believe we need laws in place to protect the vulnerable.

DullGreyGuy

Topsy1970 said:
I just feel that banks should have some responsibility to 'talk' to people about their account every 3 - 5 years or make the customer renew their account as we currently do with home / car insurance.    

But most insurance is on auto renewal and so if the customer is passive it just renews automatically just like the annual letter from the bank. No one is obliged to talk to their bank/insurer if they dont want to and you open up a host of what ifs that will need to be dealt with... does the account get closed if the customer fails to respond? If so where do funds go? Or maybe it's auto degraded? What happens if they dont reply because they are on a 3 month holiday and then need to claim on the now stopped insurance when they return?

You are saying a POA was put in place when the family spotted the issues, how realistic do you think it is that the spotty 19 year old in the call centre doing the outbound call every 3 years as you suggest would have been able to have identified the potential dementure before the family?

Having dealt with pensioners, and as mentioned before, some get very militant when you say you are doing things just because they're old and are at risk of it being discrimination. 

Brie

There are rules within the financial industry to help protect the vulnerable.  But the bank in question needs to know that the individuals are vulnerable.  As others say there would be a major blowup if a bank or any other organisation automatically started treating all 70/80/90 year olds as imbeciles merely because of their age. 

What happens instead is that in the normal course of business mistakes might become obvious, someone frequently misplaces their debit card, talking on the phone to customer services they are obviously confused OR someone with a POA tells customer service and a "vulnerable customer" flag is put on the account. 

Most banks now have a team that deals specifically with vulnerable customers and sometimes this is also the team that deals with those that aren't au fait with online banking - something that in itself can make someone vulnerable - but that can be people of any age.

Marcon

Topsy1970 said:

When the POA was in place that is when the £15 per month fee was noticed.      As we all know, Dementia is disease that slowly debilitates the individual so in the early stages they can manage their own finances, but that unfortunately does not last long, in the experience I am now seeing.     

I get the fact that when we pay for something, it is up to us whether we use it....   I just feel that banks should have some responsibility to 'talk' to people about their account every 3 - 5 years or make the customer renew their account as we currently do with home / car insurance.    

Also, not everyone has someone to be their POA or indeed family to look after them.     Surely a bank, that they have been with for years and years has some duty of care.

In addition, and again it is a personal belief, I do think there should be rules to protect us as we get older, whether we need to use them or not.     In a similar way I believe there should be rules to protect young people on social media, whether they need it or not.

Being Flippant (so please nobody take offence), but should these people have known better.    

go to the edinburgh evening news and type 

Edinburgh crime: Couple with Alzheimer's tricked by man posing as electrician with money stolen

This is why I believe we need laws in place to protect the vulnerable.

Banks are not family members or nursemaids. They do have a duty of care, but it doesn't cover all eventualities as you seem to believe - and the fact someone has 'got older' doesn't automatically make them a basket case.

We have a lot of laws in place to protect the vulnerable.

elsien

There are probably just as many, if not more stories about fully compos mentis people being taken for a ride.
My mother came within a gnat's crotchet of being scammed over home repairs. She is older but it was still her own fault because she made the fully capacitous but unwise decision to dispense with any sort of references or checks on how reputable they were. Luckily she had second thoughts about that when they arrived for the cash in advance but it was a close call.  

The in-laws would have been in their early sixties when they took the account out. And possibly doing perfectly well till their late 70's. Ask the people in those age groups on here how they would feel about being treated as vulnerable just because of a number, bearing in mind that state pension age will be 67 in the not so distant future. 

Anyway, there'd be no point making me "renew" my account because I see no benefit in paying out for the packaged ones in the first place. Many people disagree. Individual choice. 
Being over-protective and risk averse can equally be detrimental to people's wellbeing. To give a quote from Lady Hale (although referring to very different circumstances) - a gilded cage is still a cage.