Building Society Passbook not proof of account

Shrewd_Person

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, I opened Passbook savings accounts with various building societies attaining membership rights.

Following the 2008, their interest rates reduced considerably so most of my savings went to stocks and share ISA's leaving the Building Society accounts dormant accruing negligible annual interest.

In 2026, tried opening a Skipton Building society preferential member regular saver but the online facility could not find recognise my Passbook account details.

Travelled to a branch with Passbook in hand to enquire and was told that the account was assumed closed due to being dormant since 2007 and they could not find any record of me or the account.

Requested to give proof of addresses since the account was opened in 1995, but again another branch confirmed that I am not on their system and told to enquire at Head Office.

Again, Head Office repeated the above and would not honour a valid passbook as the last transaction was more than 6 years ago.

DRS1

Where did the interest go? If to this account then surely there would be more recent transactions?

masonic

A passbook is reasonable evidence that an account once existed, but it only tells the story up to the date it was last updated. It is rather like an old bank statement, but it will be updated if and only if it is presented to a branch once in a while.

One possibility is that the account was closed a long time ago, and due to the time that has passed, all information about it has been removed, which is reasonable after 7+ years of closure.

If you are confident the account wasn't closed (possession of an old passbook isn't itself evidence of this), the first question I'd be looking for an answer to is what do the rules of the society say about dormant accounts.

redux

I asked Skipton on the phone about a former Scarborough account and got a denial

Maybe it's worth trying again …

DRS1

Maybe have a look at this?

Find lost or dormant bank accounts: Reclaim cash – MSE

Reckless_Saving

Interesting, I opened my first Skipton branch account in 1996 and the last time I was in the branch was in 2004. It's always been on my to-do list to pop into branch and see if they still have the printer to update my type of passbook, they send me an interest statement in the post once a year, I have wondered over this time whether it would get flagged as a dorment account but would of assumed that they'd send me a letter before it got to this point.

In 2021 I opened for the first time one of Skiptons online regular saver account, was surprised to see the branch account listed on the Skipton app/website, all options are read-only for the branch account apart from an option to transfer from an online skipton account to a skipton branch account (but not the other way around).

One day I'll pop into the branch and say hello :)