EBS transferred my SSIA into another product - what can I do?

RATM

Hope this is the right place to put this, if not feel free to move it Mods.

I have a wee bit of a problem, €3,600 of a problem to be exact. I had an SSIA with EBS which matured on the last possible day. In the meantime I moved house and wrote to EBS informing them of such after being told on the phone that that was what I should do. Anyway after it matured I didn't want to do anything with the money, I just wanted to let it sit there for a rainy day. It matured with about €7,200 on the balance.

Now just today I received my first communication from EBS in nearly 2 years- it had gone to my old address ( despite me writing into them to change it ) and it had taken nearly 2 weeks to reach me because it was sent to the wrong address. Turns out they put my €7,200 into a 'Summit Funds' account which is linked to stocks and equities. Anyway in the meantime it has lost nearly half its value and is down to about €3,600 leaving me €3,600 out of pocket.

So Im wondering what are my options here ? They are claiming that they posted out all customers a letter stating that if there were no instructions from customers on their SSIA's that it would be invested into a Summit Fund account. I'm sure they would have done this but I never received that letter, mainly due to them not changing my address. Furthermore even if I had at what point can a bank do something with your money without your permission ?
I never wanted bankers to be playing with my money on the stockmarkets, I always intended for it to be sitting there for a rainy day. At no point did I give them permission to do so and unless it was on the original contract on opening the SSIA nearly 7 years back I certainly didnt sign anything giving them permission to do so.

Do I have a case here or am I just going to have to accept that they played with my money and blew nearly half of it. Id appreciate any advice, Im a student and €7k means a lot to me, essentially I had it earmarked for part of a house deposit in the future.

A friend told me taking a civil action would probably not be worth my while because of the legal fees involved but that it might be worth my while taking it to the small claims court which deals with claims of up to €2k. If I could get that much back it wouldn't be so bad but looking at their website it seems they mainly deal with consumer issues and it doesn't say anything about banks falling under their remit.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

BuffyBot

Well first of all, we can't give you legal advice and you shouldn't be seeking it on boards.ie. Posters posting after this, take note of that proviso.

Secondly, unless you have a written, dated proof that you gave instructions to EBS (copy and proof of postage etc), I'd wonder whether or not they received it and if/or any change was made. Personally, I always follow this kind of stuff off with a phone call to make sure that the change has been made.

Unfortunately, it does boil down to being your responsibility to ensure any instructions you have made were carried out.

Thirdly - two years without hearing from your bank? I'd of been checking up on things a lot sooner.

You can request information from them (SSIA agreement) etc which they should still have on file to check if there is a clause in that regarding what was to happen after the period ended. You could also submit a request to their Data Protection people to see if there is any record of your address being changed on their system when you requested it to be done - but to be honest, I highly suspect that it's a simple case of your letter not arriving/not being actioned, especially if post was being still addressed to your old address. However that's nigh on impossible to prove at this stage that either it was not delivered or not actioned by staff.

With regard to them having the right - well if they can say that they made attempts to contact you and failed, I guess they do have the right to make a decision of some kind, especially when your previous product (SSIA) was no longer available - someone had to choose. In your absence, the financial institution had to.

RATM

Thanks for the reply Buffy. I understand something had to be done about it as the SSIA matured. However what is peeving me is the fact that it went from a stable savings account ( SSIA ) with a guaranteed return to a risky one where the bank were playing the markets. I would have had no problem at all with them just transferring it to a regular savings account to keep the cash safe. I just can't understand how a bank can play with customers money like this without their expressed permission.....

It may be the case that the small print said that it would be transferred into a Summit Account on maturity, I'll certainly be checking it out tomorrow.

Sleipnir

You should cetainly speak to Joe Meade. This is exactly the sort of thing he deals with.

http://www.financialombudsman.ie/

There should be a formalised complaints handling process in place in every financial service provider which is easy to access. All staff should be aware of it. A senior management person should be responsible for ensuring that the complaints handling process works in a fair and proper manner.

Final Response from the Financial Service Provider
Upon receiving written notification of the complaint and request for a Final Response from the Complainant, the Provider has 25 working days in which to try to resolve the complaint by its internal complaint procedures. If at the end of the twenty five working days, a resolution has not been attained, a Final Response letter must be issued to the Complainant by the nominated member of senior management. (If the Provider requires more time to review the complaint, for example if it requires the Complainant to undergo a medical examination, the Bureau must be notified of same).

The Final Response letter must:

Contain a detailed account of the dispute at hand
Address all issues outlined in Complainant’s Complaint Form
Quote the applicable loan contract terms/policy conditions/terms of business etc
Give details of any redress offered to the Complainant by the Provider
State that it is the Final Response of the Provider for the purpose of referring the matter to the Financial Services Ombudsman's Bureau
Advise the Complainant that he/she has 15 working days from the date of said Final Response to refer the matter to the Financial Services Ombudsman's Bureau for investigation

cch

Every bank/institution/etc that I wrote to to change my address changed it on receipt of the letter, except EBS. Copped this quickly enough though and realised the only way to change the address was to go to a branch with ID, bill etc. Major pain and no acknowledgement that they'd received the letter. Know this doesn't help you now but maybe when you move again

microgirl

Hmm, that's kinda weird, because my SSIA was/is also with EBS, and also matured very close to the last possible day (if not actually the last possible day, I can't remember) but I'm about 99% certain that the letter I got prior to maturity stated that in the absence of any other instructions my SSIA balance would be transferred to an Optimise Account. Certainly not the Summit Fund, if Optimise isn't the right name for the account it was moved into.

I had a portion of my monthly deposit go into the Summit Fund, and yeah, I wish I'd taken it out at maturity as it's now worth significantly less than it was, but that was a specific product I went for - €60 of the €254 a month went into an equity-based account.

I don't really know what you could do in this situation, and obviously couldn't really give any advice even if I did, but if it was me I suppose I'd ask them for the original bumf you signed back at the beginning, just to make sure you hadn't accidentally signed up to the Summit Fund at the start, or had signed something saying transfer to the Summit Fund after maturity was likely. Just so that you're absolutely 100% fully informed whatever you do then do later.

Sleipnir

BuffyBot wrote: »

With regard to them having the right - well if they can say that they made attempts to contact you and failed, I guess they do have the right to make a decision of some kind, especially when your previous product (SSIA) was no longer available - someone had to choose. In your absence, the financial institution had to.

I'm not so sure. They could have simply put the money into a holding account. Investing it in the stock market carries risk that the customer should be aware of and agree to before the money is invested. I.e. I don't think permission can be implied just because no response was received from the customer.

zokrez

I would contact with EBS and ask for copies of all paperwork which include the initial investment proposal form and the maturity documentation. You will then be in a better position to see what happened.

Agree with Zokrez.

Prior to 'maturity' you would had to receive an SSIA4 Form from the financial institution. This was a declaration by you that you were entitled to the proceeds of the SSIA. It would appear that you received and returned this to them within the three months following the maturity date.

You don't say what type of account your original SSIA was in. Is it possible that you were in the Summit (Equity) Funds from inception?