The Lemon Fool

how do others manage this issue?
I want to make a decent large transfer to my children as part of IHT planning,,,(PETs)
but in order to keep the records clean for my executors i want to make the payment as 'one transfer'
so that the 7 year rule can be a definite date

It took me 25 minutes on telephone to SMILE bank to make the last transfer...to my son...same name address etc etc
and its not a FREEPHONE either
is there any way around this overkill by banks on 'security'

its bad enough that almost all building societies require all transfer to be made to a nominated bank account in own name
so even when savings have been put somewhere for reasobale (??) interest
it is still a multi transfer operation
add that to a daily transfer limit

am I missing an obvious method, or is it really this difficult??

mutantpoodle wrote:am I missing an obvious method, or is it really this difficult??

A cheque?

Lootman wrote:A cheque?

Yup.

Or withdraw swathes of cash and hand it over to child who then queues at the same window to pay it in. (assumes both accounts at same bank of course Otherwise walk round the corner to pay it in elsewhere - assuming branches exist and you dont get mugged! You get the drift!)

Though Im sure the previous proofs/hassle are needed to withdraw large sums of cash of course!

Id do what Lootman suggested on reflection!

Lootman wrote:A cheque?

When I had to pay big sums of money for renovation work on our house, half of the money was in a First Direct account, and half in a Nationwide Bank account (about £50000 in each). Paying the money from the First Direct account was a simple online job, taking a minute or two. Paying from the Nationwide account was far more difficult. Basically, anything over £20000 requires a Chaps transfer, for which they will charge you £20, so in the end, I wrote a cheque and handed it to the builder. The money was gone from my account the next day.

I had thought of using a cheque....but am not sure if either of the kids would know where to go as all using online banking

even for oldie like me the nearest bank that I have an actual physical account with is 10 miles away

needs must so will investigate...I had just hoped this had been done by others and found a better way

thanks again

mutantpoodle wrote:I had thought of using a cheque....but am not sure if either of the kids would know where to go as all using online banking

even for oldie like me the nearest bank that I have an actual physical account with is 10 miles away

needs must so will investigate...I had just hoped this had been done by others and found a better way

thanks again

My five grandchildren live at least 75 miles from me and one in Northern Ontario. None have any trouble banking cheques these days, using their phone apps. They have to go nowhere near a bank branch. I doubt if they even know they exist. Apparently they take a photo or something on their phone. The middle one got a cheque from me last week. The cheque was dated for the birthday, 28 September and was paid through my account on Monday.

Dod

I should have added that she is the one currently living in Northern Ontario!

Dod

Dod101 wrote:

mutantpoodle wrote:I had thought of using a cheque....but am not sure if either of the kids would know where to go as all using online banking

even for oldie like me the nearest bank that I have an actual physical account with is 10 miles away

needs must so will investigate...I had just hoped this had been done by others and found a better way

My five grandchildren live at least 75 miles from me and one in Northern Ontario. None have any trouble banking cheques these days, using their phone apps. They have to go nowhere near a bank branch. I doubt if they even know they exist. Apparently they take a photo or something on their phone. The middle one got a cheque from me last week. The cheque was dated for the birthday, 28 September and was paid through my account on Monday.

I can pay in a cheque with my First Direct app, but there's a limit of £2000.

Scott.

Simplest way is CHAPS - large (no?) limit, and instant. Required us to tell Santander we were doing it, and we went into branch to do it as we were paying for a house.

Otherwise you are at the whim of the bank's limits, which is the main reason I'm with Lloyds and Santander.

Lloyds 'in branch' limit is £250k per day, which so far has been fine. Santander will do £100k by card or over the phone or in branch, £25k online. MrsF is with HSBC, who are woefully limited.

There are lists out there of the main bank BACS limits, eg https://www.wearepay.uk/what-we-do/paym ... on-limits/ but I don't know how up to date they are as recently Lloyds and Santander (so probably others) have introduced lower caps on my accounts that I needed to opt out of, in order to reduce their exposure to fraud.

Another consideration is the account limits - current account have limits on their balance so getting it all in one place at the same time ready to transfer will take a while.

One option is if you all have Investment Accounts with the same broker, especially if you are liquidating equities to make the transfer. SImple buy a load of Jan 2024 Gilts and make an in specie transfer.

As for the date - it won't really be a problem doing them on consecutive days unless you happen to die on the anniversary and some payments get more taper relief than others

Paul

Dod101 wrote:My five grandchildren live at least 75 miles from me and one in Northern Ontario. None have any trouble banking cheques these days, using their phone apps.

Dod

Could be different in Canada of course, but my FD account has a limit on phone app cheque pay-in of IIRC £2000. So anything that is likely to represent a " decent large transfer" may not be able to be deposited in such a manner. That said if all else fails I know I can post a cheque deposit to FD, so its possible that their bank would also make this option available.

didds wrote:

Dod101 wrote:My five grandchildren live at least 75 miles from me and one in Northern Ontario. None have any trouble banking cheques these days, using their phone apps.

Dod

Could be different in Canada of course, but my FD account has a limit on phone app cheque pay-in of IIRC £2000. So anything that is likely to represent a " decent large transfer" may not be able to be deposited in such a manner. That said if all else fails I know I can post a cheque deposit to FD, so its possible that their bank would also make this option available.

... or of course multiple cheques of the phone pay-in limit, making up the total amount

Can you not just set up a funds transfer/bill payment from your bank to the recipients'. Or don't Smile do that sort of thing?

If a recipient lives overseas, you could use Wise.

didds wrote:

didds wrote:

Could be different in Canada of course, but my FD account has a limit on phone app cheque pay-in of IIRC £2000. So anything that is likely to represent a " decent large transfer" may not be able to be deposited in such a manner. That said if all else fails I know I can post a cheque deposit to FD, so its possible that their bank would also make this option available.

... or of course multiple cheques of the phone pay-in limit, making up the total amount

Nationwide online allows (allowed 2 years ago) payments of up to £10,000. I just paid it five times. Took a whole minute and a half. Writing out five times as many cheques might be a little tedious...

Loup321 wrote:

didds wrote:... or of course multiple cheques of the phone pay-in limit, making up the total amount

Nationwide online allows (allowed 2 years ago) payments of up to £10,000. I just paid it five times. Took a whole minute and a half. Writing out five times as many cheques might be a little tedious...

But there is no limit on cheques if you pay them into a branch. The biggest cheque I can recall writing was for £80,000 and there was no problem with it. Surely for an amount of this magnitude you could hire a limo to take you there and back?

Lootman wrote:

Loup321 wrote:Nationwide online allows (allowed 2 years ago) payments of up to £10,000. I just paid it five times. Took a whole minute and a half. Writing out five times as many cheques might be a little tedious...

But there is no limit on cheques if you pay them into a branch. The biggest cheque I can recall writing was for £80,000 and there was no problem with it. Surely for an amount of this magnitude you could hire a limo to take you there and back?

No, I agree, but the discussion was on paying cheques in by phone with a £2,000 limit. For me, I would pay a cheque in at a branch (no mobile phone), so if it's raining and I can save myself the return bus fare (and visiting a branch would probably take an hour out of my day as I don't drive either), I'll spend the whole minute and a half banking online to do it.

Not sure I would hire a limo. Not very green, and probably not very road worthy (from all the doom-saying online trash I have read ).

didds wrote:

Lootman wrote:A cheque?

Yup.

Or withdraw swathes of cash and hand it over to child who then queues at the same window to pay it in. (assumes both accounts at same bank of course Otherwise walk round the corner to pay it in elsewhere - assuming branches exist and you dont get mugged! You get the drift!)

Though Im sure the previous proofs/hassle are needed to withdraw large sums of cash of course!

Id do what Lootman suggested on reflection!

Catch will be paying in large sums of cash will likely trigger ML process within the bank. (Given ML overkill maybe adjoining safe deposit boxes and expensive secondhand jewelry is the way to go)

Transferring in stages is likely to trigger a security flag and give you extra trouble. It is best to do it in one go. I can transfer £100K over the phone with Santander, using Faster Payments. Starling will transfer £1million with Faster Payments (but they say that there are account limits). You have to deposit large cheques by post though. Barclays offers free CHAPS, and so does Santander with their Edge accounts. Santander's branch service is virtually non-existent, even in a big city, but I can pay cheques into the Skipton.

Certainly cheques is one way. Take it into a bank with their paying in slip. There is no limit as far as I am aware.

I did it for much larger amounts for my grandchildren by opening Hargreaves Lansdown accounts for them and then just instructing HL to transfer the amounts to their accounts, confirming they were gifts. That at least gave irrefutable evidence of the gifts.

or just write a letter to each telling them what you are giving them and then make the transfers over a number of days from your bank to theirs.
Again that should suffice. My bank's daily online transfer limit is £50k but I'm pretty sure they would allow larger amounts if I rang them and asked.
It helps if you are a 'premier banking' client where you have a higher daily limit and a nominated person at the bank to speak to.

I have used the technique of getting a paying-in book (or slips) from family members, writing cheques and paying them in at my nearest bank. This worked well for quite large sums several years ago. I think this does have some disadvantages :

(1) Bank transfers and CHAPS payments have a reference field, which can state meaningful details of the payment. I keep digital copies of bank statements and especially those with high value gifts or probate distributions. I think that Cheque numbers give less robust evidence.

(2) Cheque processing does have a low (but non-zero) defect rate, I believe. Maybe this is no longer the case, but I think the process relies on scanning and manipulating bits of paper, which can go wrong in various ways.