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