EDITOR – How much would £10 (around R200) be worth after 47 years of compound interest? Nothing at all, according to the UK Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
Leaving a small amount in a bank account (£10) made sense when leaving England in 1967 in case one returned to the UK, saving the hassle of opening a new one.
Imagine the depositor’s delight when, in October last year, he found the still pristine Bankbook featuring the said balance, and the inscription, “This is an interest bearing account”…
Letters to the bank (Lloyd’s, Earls Court, London) were studiously ignored.
The FOS was then approached for assistance. To the FOS the bank claimed to have no record of the account, despite my furnishing a copy of the actual Bankbook, beautifully emblazoned ‘Lloyd’s Bank’ and featuring the account number, the sort code and the credit balance as at June 1967.
After lengthy deliberations the FOS advised that nothing could be done since, “Lloyd’s is not obligated to retain customers’ records after six years.”
How absurd – the bank has been provided with hard evidence of the account’s existence and, secondly, they are not the customer’s records, but the bank’s. The bank furnished the Bankbook (not the customer), the bank issued the account number (not the customer) and the bank quoted the sort code (not the customer), thus it is the bank’s records (not the customer’s) that “have not been retained”.
Not difficult to see why, really. An actuary may be needed to determine just how much £10 may have grown to after compounding each month for 47 years.
Purely on this ‘technicality’ of whose records are lost, the FOS’s purpose to protect the industry – instead of the individual – ought to fail, but that’s unlikely. Perhaps the old line ‘You can’t fight City Hall’ needs to be extended to include ‘or the FOS’!
Depositers should be made aware that the banks are at liberty to confiscate deposits if there has been just 72 months of inactivity on the account.
Harry Stottle
Kloof
