back to article Your gran and her cronies are 'embracing online banking' – study

Online banking has seen a boom among the older generation, with nearly 2.3 million aged between 70 and over 100 years old now using internet banking, according to figures compiled by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA). The BBA said more than 450,000 customers over the age of 60 are using banking apps on smart phones, iPads …

  1. dogged

    She better not be, she's been dead for 20 years.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      @dogged

      I'll see your 20 & raise you 30...

  2. Ketlan
    Happy

    Bankers for anyone...

    I don't know why anyone would use anything BUT internet banking. It makes life a lot simpler, especially for the disabled or those who are less than usually able.

    1. Richard Jones 1
      FAIL

      Re: Bankers for anyone...

      As someone who has a number of limitations on mobility for a string of different reasons not all connected to my person and who is only months off 70 I do not use on line banking and can see little point to its use. Just watching the messes that my daughter frequently has to sort out with her on lines sets ups it is enough to put me off.

      With even more passwords to forget on line banking has a range of limitations. I do pay bills on line, a boon but have no desire to lose paper statements and utility bills since it can be essential for so many transactions following Blair's money laundering fiasco legislation. The law that means only crooks can easily open a bank account these days.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: Bankers for anyone...

        Passwords? For online banking? Is it 2005 again?

    2. Sarah Balfour

      Re: Bankers for anyone...

      I'm guessing in your narrow-minded, myopic worldview that disability is only a physical thing…? Banking for me - both on-and-offline - is a fucking nightmare. I am both physically disabled and I'm autistic, I don't have a phone, nor am I able to go to a branch. I needed to access my online account, but I'd forgotten my details.

      I found NatWest's online chat thingy, and was basically told that I'd have to call their online banking team (I don't own a phone because the fucking things terrify me) or go into a branch. When I said that neither was possible, the response basically boiled down to "Well you're fucked then, ain't ya…?!"

      That 30-minute online conversation left me in a state of panic for more than 2 days. Helpful banking, my fucking arse!

      I can't even have anyone act on my behalf, apparently, because that's against their Ts&Cs; it's for "customer protection" apparently - sounds more like NW protecting corporate arse. Stupidly let slip that my mother had logged into my account a fortnight or so ago, because I'd been having trouble with the DWP. Was told in no uncertain terms that, if she logged into my account again, they'd terminate it. Fucking jobsworths!

      Obviously, I'm not so naïve or stupid to think that banks don't need to protect their customers, but there has to be a balance between protecting people from fraud and denying people with disabilities that make it impossible for them to access their own accounts, access to their money…?

      She didn't even tell me "this call is being recorded" until just before she 'hung up' on me. I thought it was illegal not to inform someone they were being recorded at the START of the conversation. I'm now wondering if she broke the law by not telling me until almost the end.

      I'm now effectively locked our of my own account.

      1. commonsense

        Re: Bankers for anyone...

        I'm curious to know what you actually expected them to do for you? Send you your login details over the live chat session?

        1. Hollerith 1

          Re: Bankers for anyone...

          Perhaps he was hoping that they would realise that they are dealing with a customer with disabilities and think of a way of serving him appropriately. Ramps and induction loops are not the only sort of customer service.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And how much of this...

    And how much of this is (a) people automatically signed up to services, and (b) accounts run by someone else running under Power of Attourney?

    1. Richard Jones 1
      Unhappy

      Re: And how much of this...

      I doubt that there are many Attorneys signed up unless you have found a bank that has the slightest idea of what a Power of Attorney might be. Nitwit bank could not even follow a court order let alone a PoA so wanted to run an illegal set up, I was less than impressed.

      Fortunately in another case I had third party authority prior to the PoA being activated. Some of the building societies were no better, - wanting signatures from people who were debarred from operating an account does not feel so terribly smart. Sending out cash cards to people who have lost the capability to operate a bank account and were not allowed to operate the account was another questionable move. - unless you work in financial (dis)services.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: And how much of this...

      Doubt people go through third party access or power of attourney nonsense, technology has rendered it practically useless. Cards have a PIN and children apply for Internet banking on their parents' behalf to run their accounts. Offically it's the parents doing all of this. The banks don't know.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: And how much of this...

        That sounds legally very dodgy indeed. If anything went wrong without all the 'power of attourney nonsense' being in order you would be in deep shit.

  4. Warm Braw

    May not be what it seems

    When Powers of Attorney used to be straightforward, banks were incredibly bad at handling them. Banks have got better, but Powers of Attorney have become much more complicated and expensive.

    Registering for Internet banking seems to subject to none of the same procedural complication, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if a significant proportion of these silver citizens merely passed on the password to their kids, in the same way they've likely given them the PIN for their debit card.

    1. Otto is a bear.

      Re: May not be what it seems

      Yup, we regularly do banking for our mums, both in their 80s, and the kids often do it for Mrs. Bear. It is just so much easier, but you do have to have trust worthy family. We also do each others shopping when someone is ill and can't go to the store.

      Funny thing is, stores really don't check cards, I really look nothing like Mrs. Bear, Mrs. Bear Snr. or the mother-in-law, but I've done shopping for all of them with their cards. I've tried telling them, they can pay me back later but no, here's the card and PIN.

      We do have enduring power of attorney for our mums, but somehow I doubt we'll ever need it, both seem to have more marbles that we do.

    2. ma1010
      Go

      Re: May not be what it seems

      EXACTLY! I did my mother's banking for the last 10 years of her life. She wouldn't have known how to turn a computer on (and couldn't care less), but my 90+ year old mother's accounts were all handled via online banking. So I would say the statistics here are likely dodgy.

  5. Trygve

    Bugger all choice, that's why.

    All the bank branches near my mum have either closed, or turned into a miserable cattle markets where 'customers' are herded towards ranks of broken ATMs by pimply twits with their name badges on upside down.

    Hardly surprising many choose to wrestle with banking systems while sitting in their own homes rather than while standing around in a grimy building after making a journey for the purpose.

  6. Dave Bell

    There's so much of this, both Powers of Attorney and informal arrangements, which fits with my experience. But the banks may have improved, or at least some of them, over the handling of a PoA.

    I stick with paper delivery of bank statements because it can be used as a proof of address. The whole business of proving who you are seems to rely on a jumble of possible documents. Can you prove you're entitled to work in the UK without a passport? But a passport doesn't prove your address. The whole Identity Card business of a decade ago could have been an answer to that, but it looked like an expensive boondoggle.

    Incidentally, I use paper cheques so infrequently that I still have an unused chequebook that is a decade old, still with the tear-off printed address on the front (windowed envelopes) for my home at that time.

    1. Richard Jones 1
      Happy

      @Dave Bell, I can beat that one, I have just shredded an old book from 1995, however I do still use cheques, just not very often!

      1. VinceH

        "I do still use cheques, just not very often!"

        Ditto - I write a single cheque out each year (around about now, ion fact - I did this year's last week).

        The annoying thing is, it's on a HSBC business account, and my cheque books contain a hundred cheques each. I have quite a few because, for the last couple of years at least, HSBC have sent me through two new cheque books in response to the cheque being cleared - even though the cheques haven't been from the tail end of the book which used to trigger this.

        So I'm now waiting to see if I get another two in the post this year.

  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    HSBC

    You'd think that by now HSBC would have added Linux as a desktop platform that they recognise.

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: HSBC

      First Direct (who are HSBC) are quite happy with Linux on the desktop...

      What doesn't work on the HSBC site?

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: HSBC

        Unless he just means the Rapport security software, it seems unlikely.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: HSBC

        "What doesn't work on the HSBC site?"

        Working & being officially supported are two different things. I used to bank with HSBC for both business & personal. I don't know if it's changed but their credit-card settling process used to look a bit Heath Robinsonish. AFAICT it was handed over from one system to another mid-process & not hiding the join 100% successfully. One night this hand-over consistently failed. I thought I'd give them a friendly heads-up that they might have a problem, maybe some overnight job getting in the way. Of course they want to know what S/W you're using & their instant response was "we don't support that". This was later confirmed in writing by them. So for that and other incivilities such as closing my most convenient local branch I sacked them.

        As of a few weeks ago HSBC group - including FD - still had the same restriction listed on their web-site. Even Barclays list Linux as supported. So although First Direct may work OK with Linux as soon as there's a problem, even at their end, you''ll find they don't want to know.

  8. Jonathan Richards 1

    Aged grandmothers and younger villains

    @ Dr Syntax: One of my grandmothers was born in 1881, and has been gone for fifty-four years, now, but that's not what I came here to say.

    I think 108-year-old online banking customers ought to prompt just a little more diligence within the banks; the BBC carried a programme recently reporting on a banking scam wherein a vulnerable 94-year-old was tricked into transferring hundreds of thousands of pounds into some ne'er-do-well's pockets, as part of which the villains had set up online banking on her behalf. She has never owned a computer nor used online anything.

  9. cosymart
    WTF?

    POA is easy

    Getting a POA was easy, just a matter of knowing a good solicitor. Getting my mothers bank, Halifax, to accept it and set up/change the accounts was worse than pulling teeth. At one branch when I presented the certified signed copy quote from the branch POA expert "I am sorry I can't accept a copy" me "why" him "because I need to feel it, to check it is real"....What!? I could go on....

  10. Chris G

    Bunch of bankers

    I am in my 60s, do some business online but not banking, I wouldn't trust my bank to tie a shoelace securely, never mind look after my meagre assets. The first couple of years I had the account, they kept sending statements to my email no matter how much I tried to get them to stop, finally, like so many things in Spain I made personal social contact with a senior bank official and mentioned my problems and it stopped.Still don't trust them though.

  11. DocJames
    Paris Hilton

    108?

    Sounds like a facebook-style DOB...

    but that could never happen! Banking security ensures everyone is exactly who they say they are!

    Paris, cos she'll believe you.

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