Barclays took FIVE YEARS to trace my late father’s £4,000
E.W. writes: More than five years after my father passed away, Barclays has informed me that there is still money left in an investment account. In 2015 and again in 2016, it led me to believe everything had been sorted out. Now it says that it still holds about £4,000, but it insists on seeing the original grant of probate, which is no longer available.
EVERY silver lining has a cloud. Suddenly finding that your father left £4,000 more than you expected is certainly good news. But then finding a pretty hefty stumbling block stops you getting access to the cash is more than a bit frustrating.
You sent Barclays a copy of the grant of probate, signed by your solicitor to certify that it is genuine. You also sent copies of your father’s will, death certificate and other paperwork, including some documents which you have told me the bank lost, so which had to be supplied again.
But the stumbling block remained the bank’s insistence that before parting with the money, it wanted the grant of probate.
To obtain this would have meant a legal bill for £400 or more, even though the bank had, of course, been actively involved several years ago, when your father’s estate was being wound up and distributed. And the problem would never have arisen if Barclays had revealed the savings account at the proper time.
What went wrong? The bank’s letter to you does not say. It simply tells you: ‘Barclays undertakes periodic reviews of transactions and customer files. A recent review of documentation relating to the investments has identified there are assets due to be paid from the account following the passing of the late J.W. deceased.’
I asked officials at the bank to explain why they now needed the grant of probate, and they have told me that because they overlooked the savings account at the time, there was only a modest amount of money to hand over to you.
Because of this, they accepted a simple claim form, without seeing the grant of probate. If they had spotted the £4,000-plus, they would have asked for the grant.
A Barclays spokesman said: ‘We offer our sincere apologies to Mr W for failing to identify his father’s investment account when executing his estate back in 2015. We recognise that he has not received the high level of service he would rightly expect at such a difficult time, and have offered Mr W compensation for the initial error and a gesture of goodwill for the distress and inconvenience caused.’
In practical terms, what this means is that Barclays itself has now applied for and received an electronic version of the grant of probate at its own expense. Your father’s account holds £4,092. The bank has added £788 interest and a further £250 by way of apology, and your account has now received a total of £5,130.