When Colleen contacted the bank in February 2024 on a separate matter, she discovered the retired trustee still had access to the trust's accounts. In April, she complained to us about the bank’s failure to remove his access. In June, the bank formally responded to her complaint, saying it should have notified the trust that it needed to update its account mandate after the trustee told it he was retiring. It apologised for its error but assured her the trustee had not accessed, or been given any information about, the trust’s funds since retiring.

In September, Colleen asked us to stop considering her complaint, only to make a further complaint to us in December, in which she said she would never have created the trust if she had known other trustees could access the financial information held in its name. She also complained that she had never seen the signed account operating mandate, that the bank had failed to obtain appropriate identification for the signatories, and finally that the bank breached her privacy and security by failing to remove the trustee's access when he retired. 

Our investigation 

We examined Colleen’s December complaint in light of her April complaint, and also examined the bank's June response to her earlier complaint. We concluded that the December complaint was merely a continuation of the April complaint, and that the underlying facts in both were the same. The bank had issued its final position in June, and Colleen chose not to ask us to formally consider the complaint and withdrew her involvement in September. When she complained to us in December, more than three months had elapsed since the bank issued its final position, and our terms of reference do not permit us to consider a complaint after such a period of time.

Outcome

We could not consider Colleen’s complaint.