l was married for 50+ years, l handled everything on behalf of my husband, now he’s dead l have to prove to all authorities who l am. l have never had to show my birth and marriage certificate so much.
Its like they dont believe me, like they’re calling me a liar.
What’s worse, lm a technophobe so l dont have a mobile, alll can do is look at my bank online , emails and shopping as lm housebound. l do everything by post and landline, which leaves the IT generation at a loss as to how to see the documents they need. And then when l do manage to get them to their office they sit on it for days.
l am still waiting, 3 months down the line, for them to confirm or not if there is any widows pension for me.
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Yes i totally agree Lotswife… you do have to prove who are now, I’m beginning to feel like an alien regarding any financial institution.
The latest encounter was in my local building society who I’ve had my own account with for 30 years plus and the assistant wanted to know if I minded telling her what I needed the money for!!! So I politely said well yes I do. But being as she had my money and I needed it I told her it was for some fencing and then she let me have it… You couldn’t make it up.
My sister and I are power of attorney for our 94 year in a nursing home and when we tried to move a very poorly paid bank acc.into into her same bank in her name but a better rate as her nursing home fees are £1000 plus a week we were told we needed to have a solicitor sign another P.O.A. and then get our Aunt to ring the bank to verify who she was, We gave up and a cup of tea!!! Hope others are fairing better.
Love Jenny
You have my sympathies with this sort of stuff but, it is all to do with ensuring that banks, and other financial institutions, are releasing money to the person who is entitled to it.
Let’s face it, none of us would be very pleased if we went to get money out of our accounts and found the bank had released it to some random person who’d disappeared on a spending spree!
Similarly, anyone could phone the bank and say “my husband, Fred Bloggs, has died, so kindly transfer all his savings to me - here’s my account number”.
They have to ensure that you are who you say you are (even if they know you) - and their regulator would ask what evidence they had seen to support this.
The bank teller saying " well my mother and Mrs Bloggs have been friends for years and I knew Mr Bloggs had died" just wouldn’t cut the mustard with the regulators.
As for asking what you want the money for (and I know it feels very intrusive - I’ve had it happen to me) - it’s about ensuring you are not being scammed or that you aren’t being pressurised by anyone to withdraw your cash and give it to them.
Having said all that, I did think that maybe I was being filmed for some hidden camera show, like “You’ve been framed”, when I sat in an office at my local Barclays bank, holding my open passport up, next to my face, while the clerk dealing with me took my photograph!! And this was me trying to put money in - not take it out! Never happened to me before.
I know they get twitchy about money laundering too, so need evidence you are who you say you are and need to know where money has come from (though, I’m not sure as I’ve never done it, but I would suspect if you’d made your millions from drug dealing you’re not likely to tell the Barclays bank clerk that’s how you got your cash!).
It’s a funny old world.
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I am amazed you have a branch of your bank , there are none left where I live, forced down the online route
You are doing quite well for a “technophobe” managing shopping and banks online
You are way ahead on then 
