Irish bank refuse to issue a letter of 'no interest'

Many thanks to Brendan and all who took the time to advise me. As recommended, I wrote to Scottish Friendly (ScF) and Bank of Ireland (BOI) asking for them to work together to resolve the issue and/or provide a final response with a view to my contacting the financial regulators. Consequently, I finally have the money in my account! I was disappointed to find from the response of ScF that when they had tried to contact BOI, they did not respond. ‘Although we contacted Bank of Ireland a number of times we didn’t receive a response from them’. ScF also said ‘As the named assignee, Bank of Ireland should have the paperwork supporting this from when the policy was purchased’.

Bank of Ireland’s response to me was very brief and in no way apologised.

I cannot emphasize the stress, worry and amount of time and energy I had to put into getting the monies due to me - I nearly gave up a couple of times. Dealing with two financial institutions as an elderly individual takes its toll. To ensure that others do not have the same experience, I am considering making a complaint to the relevant financial regulators - do you think that this would be of any use? Please let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks again,

Marni
 
DannyBoyD said:
My advice, where possible is to use the initial only of your first name & yr second name when writing (e.g. J. Smith rather than Jane Smith)
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This just advertises that you’re a crank of either sex.

Whether it makes you more likely to succeed with a complaint is moot.
 
Fortune said:
In that case, it would seem likely that when they acquired the original insurer that OP took a policy out with, they migrated the policies to their own system and have them new policy numbers, and failed to adequately record the original policy number.
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Sounds most likely. And as to why they didnt keep the original policy numbers somewhere- most likely either ancient IT systems which would have required too much investment to adapt to hold that data, or a rushed migration project where nobody thought of the long term consequences. Or both.
 
DannyBoyD said:
misogyny hasn't gone away. Plenty of research that demonstrates bias (be that unconscious or otherwise) based on names / gender.
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The first thing that would need to be done is to match the letter to a customer record on their systems. Everyone then knows the gender, rendering the use of initials pointless
 
Dr Strangelove said:
Or maybe to a more than one record given they can’t narrow it down as they are missing most letters of a first name…..
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I'm wondering if the policy was assigned to Royal Bank of Ireland originally, and ScF decided that meant BoI rather than AIB. Then BoI didn't have any records (because it was never assigned to them), but didn't want to let the money go just in case they did have an assignment they couldn't find.

I've also heard of UK companies deciding that AIB stood for Anglo Irish Bank.....
 
DannyBoyD said:
misogyny is alive and kicking.
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When you're complaining — as in this case — to your own bank or your own insurance company, you should realise that they already know your full name, your gender, and a great deal more about you besides. Signing your name with your initial only isn't going to keep this information from them.
 
If you read the OP - they were getting zero traction & being fobbed off.

The advice still stands in general - bias exists, even if we'd like to think it doesn't.
 
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