Halifax gives extra – but not for sister
Mrs L.B. writes: On the birth of each of my children, I opened Halifax savings accounts for them. When Halifax was floated on the stock market, account holders were given shares. However, now my daughters have grown up, I have found one account has been credited with dividends and the other has not, so one daughter is much better off. I tried researching who should have received shares, but I was unsuccessful. If Halifax was in the wrong, then both children should have the same balance. I do not want them to fall out over this. YOUR daughters are now 19 and 22 years old, but to understand what has happened you need to go back to the 1990s. The building society turned itself into a bank and issued shares to account holders in June 1997, but entitlement to the shares came with strings attached.
Crucially, shares went to people who had at least £100 in their account at midnight on November 25, 1994. One of your daughters did have this much, but the other did not – her account held nothing until September 1995, which was too late to qualify for shares.
So, this is the bad news. One of your daughters did get free shares, while the other was, quite correctly, never entitled to any. But there is a twist to the tale.
Lloyds Banking Group, which now owns Halifax, has discovered that, in fact, neither of your daughters should have received a share windfall.
You were a member of the Halifax in your own right, and you were allocated 200 free shares. Your daughter also received 200 free shares. But since her account was in your name, it should not have qualified for any.
This, and other windfall schemes, had a ‘one person, one block of shares’ rule – and you got a double distribution. The good news is that Lloyds has assured me it has no intention of trying to snatch back the extra shares or reclaim the dividends.
What would be fair, though, would be for you to explain to your older daughter exactly what has happened, and suggest that a good outcome for the family would be for the shares and dividends to be divided equally between her and her sister.
Lloyds has written to you, explaining how to arrange this.