2015 - 2016

Payment systems

Cheque

Mr T invested $8,000 with his bank in the 1990s. He later moved overseas, and his mother managed his financial affairs in New Zealand. In 1999, the bank closed Mr T’s investment account and sent a bank cheque for the proceeds to his mother’s address.  Mr T’s mother sent the cheque on to Mr T. 

Six months later, the bank rang Mr T’s mother to ask whether he intended to present the cheque. She let Mr T know about the phone call, although she could not recall which bank had phoned. Mr T had received the cheque, but had mislaid it. He did not follow up the matter at the time. 

In 2014, Mr T found the cheque and contacted the bank to collect the proceeds. The bank said it no longer held any records about the investment account or the cheque. It said the cheque might have been cancelled and reissued years earlier. In any event, given how much time had elapsed, and given it held no records, it declined to honour the cheque. 

Mr T approached us. He believed the bank should not have closed the investment account.  Further, he said the bank should have taken further steps to contact him when the cheque was not presented after the phone call to his mother. Nor was Mr T convinced the bank had no record of the cheque. 

We assessed whether the bank had carried out a full search of its records and concluded it had undertaken a thorough search. We were unable to do more because our terms of reference do not give us the power to consider a complaint about events that occurred before a bank joined the Banking Ombudsman Scheme. In this case, the bank had joined the scheme well after the events Mr T was complaining about, and so we could not help him.