My brother and I are trustees for a Nationwide trust account left by our late mother 14 years ago to support our disabled brother.
Nationwide recently wrote to say it intended to close this account and required the original trust document and the HMRC registration.
Meanwhile, without warning, it put a security block on the account. We immediately took the required documents to the local branch. That was nearly three weeks ago, but the account has not been restored and Nationwide won’t tell us when we will receive the funds.
VG, Stratford-upon-Avon
Nationwide’s outrageous behaviour is causing your brother distress, you tell me. His laptop, which he relies on, has broken and can’t be replaced without a top-up from the funds, and you can’t book a long-awaited treat to see his beloved Manchester United at Old Trafford.
A number of banks have quietly been divesting themselves of trust accounts, partly, it seems, because of the complexity and cost imposed by anti-money-laundering laws. Nationwide says this is to give its customers “better services”! To this end your type of account – used, it says, by a tiny fraction of customers – is due to become obsolete.
Its initial response to me was disingenuous. It said it gave you the required 90 days’ notice and put a block on the account while it awaited beneficiary details. As soon as it received the information, the account was reopened. Baloney! You say the only time you were asked for information was in the letter announcing the closure, and you duly provided the documents. Since then, your repeated attempts to find out why it was blocked, and when it would be reinstated, elicited generic guff about money-laundering rules.
Nationwide didn’t ask you for beneficiary details until the day after I contacted it – a full 17 days after you had taken the requested documents into the bank – and you were able to supply them there and then over the phone.
The farce was compounded by the fact that it would only let you communicate by phone or chatbot. Emails, it claims, are as much a security risk as your account.
I asked if it wanted to reconsider its initial response to me. It then decided that it had realised, after reviewing the documents you brought in, that it needed additional details and had resolved to ask for them at the “next interaction”. Proactively contacting you didn’t seem to cross its mind.
The next “interaction” was when you called to question the ongoing block, but, in its words, the team “didn’t fully provide the clarity needed”. That is to say, it clean forgot to ask you for the information that was prolonging the block.
A week later you called again and, whoops, it slipped its mind to mention this crucial requirement!
A revised Nationwide statement belatedly admits its failings. “We have spoken to the customer to apologise that we could have been clearer about the different reasons for the closure and block, and that we didn’t ask for the missing information earlier,” it says. “We have confirmed we will outline the position above in a letter. We have also offered £150 compensation as the service she received fell below our usual high standard.”
It has sent the funds and you are opening an account elsewhere.
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