Banking parental control

Has anyone managed to get a bank to put in place a transaction limit for their aged parents.

Something like £70 , above which the bank gets a third party confirmation that’s it’s a legit transaction

This is to stop my elderly mum , who is nearly 91 falling for one of the plethora of scams that do the rounds.

She lives alone and her short term memory is shot.

Not sure if this is a thing, please don’t jabber on about LPA s , we are all over that. It’s letting her keep control of her money and day to day finance, but if she gets a phone call from the bank to say get accounts are being emptied and she must move her money to a special holding account instantly she probably would.

From what you say you have the financial PoA in place, so I’d hope (not at this stage yet) the bank will discuss your requirements and sort it out.

Be interested in the response, as I say not at this stage yet with my parents.

If you do have PoA can you open another current account and move £70 at a time over to it as and when needed.

Then you take complete control of the main account for bills etc., and only give her the bank card for the ‘spending money’ account?

What about a pre-paid mastercard? With Monzo you can set a spending limit for ATM, card transactions and outbound bank transfers. Takes 48 hrs to make the changes. Also it sends me a notification every time I spend.

I’d speak to the bank they are with, but ultimatley it sounds like you want something like this, i.e. a pre payed debit card or simmilar:

What about a pre-paid mastercard? With Monzo you can set a spending limit for ATM, card transactions and outbound bank transfers. Takes 48 hrs to make the changes. Also it sends me a notification every time I spend.

With my daughter (13) she has a starling kite account linked to mine and I can set a daily spending limit and I get alerts for all spending, maybe move some cash into something like that for day to day that you can control?

the alternate to a pre-payed debit is just an account with no overdraft facilities and a limited amount of cash popped in it every month, or better still a credit card with a low limit that’s paid off every month. The risk is that your mum buys lunch/a supermarket shop and gets caught short.

The reason there aren’t solutions to approve the transactions is that banking is mostly run on realtime rails – you swipe or tap a card and the POS terminal needs a response within a few seconds to continue or not. There isn’t time to ping something to their son’s mobile, hope he reads it and presses approve/decline within that time frame.

I know with Lloyds you can limit how the card can be used – e.g. only in person in a shop, but no on-line use. I did this on one of mine when I suspected it may have been phished  – just restricted it to ‘in person’ purchases.

Not sure if this is a thing, please don’t jabber on about LPA s , we are all over that. It’s letting her keep control of her money and day to day finance, but if she gets a phone call from the bank to say get accounts are being emptied and she must move her money to a special holding account instantly she probably would.

I have the same concerns with my Mum (although she’s only mid-70’s and still has most of her faculties although she’s very frail physically).

We’ve got PoA in place but (as far as I understand it and I’m willing to be corrected), it doesn’t allow you to actually control day-to-day expenses without her approval – or the approval of a medical professional should she be rendered incapable for whatever reason. It’s cropped up on other threads on here too and (again, as far as I understand it), you’d probably have to set up a specific account to put limited funds into on a regular basis so she couldn’t be cleaned out in one go.

I get what you’re saying though, it’s not a nice world to live in where you’re constantly worrying about things like that. My Mum is under strict instructions to contact me or my sister before she does anything financial or if she has the slightest suspicions about anything and we’ve spelled out the WhatsApp scam (the “hey Mum it’s me, this is my new number…” one).

Fortunately she doesn’t WhatsApp. Does text and emails though.
Will try to have a chat with her bank and see if we can put a single transaction limit in any format of over say £99 gets blocked or put on hold.
Don’t think she would go for a new credit card tbh.
Trouble with constantly adding money in , knowing her and her WW2 spending mentality , very quickly it would grow to a chunk of cash .

I would consider taking over full control of her existing accounts and giving her a pre-paid account for spending out of.

I use revolut for most things these days, all I can lose is what’s in the account though of course there is nothing stopping me putting a lot of money through it if I’m determined to do so.

it doesn’t allow you to actually control day-to-day expenses without her approval – or the approval of a medical professional should she be rendered incapable for whatever reason

My understanding is that the financial PoA is immediate and it’s the health and welfare one that only comes in when they lose their faculties?

I ended up just taking over all of my Mum’s finances for 5 years after my Dad died.  I was named as a joint account holder but she only had a little bit of cash in the house for paying the window cleaner etc.  No card, cheque book etc. and she didn’t do online.  Meant I had to do everything, including the weekly shop. Was definitely the best move though as she deteriorated with dementia.  Even still she got a scam call and was convinced they were emptying her bank account and I couldn’t convince her they weren’t as she couldn’t give any banking details away as she didn’t know them!

I just had a chat with my Mum to get all this in place.  Speak to your’s and discuss your concerns.

My understanding is that the financial PoA is immediate and it’s the health and welfare one that only comes in when they lose their faculties?

It still requires their authority. PoA is there for if/when someone is in a state (such as dementia, coma etc) where they have ongoing financial commitments but lack the capacity to make those decisions themselves at which point the PoA kicks in. You can’t just get a PoA and then take over your parents’ bank accounts for fairly obvious anti-fraud / safeguarding reasons.

If my Mum wants to go and make a donation to Scams-R-Us.com, there is no way that I can be notified of that or prevent it.

I would get something like a Revolut or Monzo as specified above. Pre paid account can work well. You can “own” the app and just give her a card.

Had to go through this with my mum for different reasons but them keeping control of a bank account is a constant worry.

I’m pulling up a chair, as I’ve emerging worries about my father’s decreasing ability to judge these things.

PoA is there for if/when someone is in a state (such as dementia, coma etc) where they have ongoing financial commitments but lack the capacity to make those decisions themselves at which point the PoA kicks in.

This is incorrect. There are two types of PoA, Property and Finance, and Health and Welfare

A Property and Finance PoA has two options, one of which must be chosen when it’s set up and then that’s how it stays:

1) It can be used straightaway, even if the Donor has capacity to make decisions themselves, and can be used if/when they get to a point where they can’t

or

2) It can only be used when the Done doesn’t have the capacity to make those decisions

Health and Welfare PoA can only be used when the Donor lacks the capacity to make decisions about their health and welfare themselves.

What a Property and Finance PoA doesn’t do is remove the authority from the Donor. Once you register it with the Donor’s bank, say, you don’t ‘take over’ their accounts, you can simply operate them and the Donor can continue to operate them. If they have capacity to make decisions, then, bluntly, they have the capacity to make bad decisions, and there’s little/nothing the bank can do to prevent that (unless it’s an actual scam/fraud, in which case its the same as you or I and they may well refund any scammed funds).

So, to the OP first step is to speak to the bank and explain that she is what is termed ‘vulnerable’ because of her age, as they should have procedures in place to add a level of protection for her.

but if she gets a phone call from the bank to say get accounts are being emptied and she must move her money to a special holding account instantly she probably would.

By the by, this would only work if she does some form of online banking, as these scams generally rely on hacked online banking details, things like “we’re going to send a code to your phone, can you tell me what it is?”, or getting the person to log in as themselves and make the payment themselves etc. If she’s not signed up to online banking she’s pretty much safe from this sort of thing.

I use revolut for most things these days

I wouldn’t touch Revolut with a long fraud-resistant barge pole

As mentioned previously, Starling Bank might be an option ?

My parents are at this stage too, you have my sympathy. Barclays have been good blocking scams with my dad. It’s a shock when he falls for them, very saddening.

Great info from IHN, thanks

https://www.sibstar.co.uk/

This was on Radio 4 gapfinders, might be of use?

I have poa over my father’s bank account. AFAIK and am pretty sure but not , 💯, the bank won’t talk to you unless poa is in place or your mother has set something specific up

I get text messages when there is movement on the account ie debit card spend or whatnot. I am approve or deny.

My general rule with dad is don’t do anything without my approval, ever. He lets me know if he spends etc

Similar situation to others with increasingly confused and forgetful ol’ mum.

I set up online banking to manage bill payments etc, but she wouldn’t understand how to use it, doesn’t have the passwords and the 2fa pings to my phone. The cash card she has to use doesn’t have any numbers printed on it, so I hope she couldn’t do anything silly. If she tried a large transaction to say a dodgy tradesman’s portable card reader, I doubt she could remember the pin these days.

She rang me once about a legit gardener needing payment. She would have liked to pay cash,  but I spoke to the guy and asked him to leave an invoice/bill, which being legit he was happy to do.