A General Power of Attorney (also known as an Ordinary Power of Attorney) is a legal document. It lets you appoint a person of your choice (the attorney) to act on your behalf.

The General Power of Attorney lets your attorney assist with your day to day banking affairs, such as making decisions about your finances, for you, or carrying out transactions on your account. A General Power of Attorney may be suitable if you have mental capacity but are struggling with the day to day management of your account and need help in the short term. For example, this may be due to:

• Illness or disability
• An extended period of time out of the country
• Being housebound or having limited mobility

We encourage you to continue to monitor your accounts while you’re still mentally and physically able to do so, even when you appoint someone else to act on your behalf. If you feel you’re no longer able to monitor your accounts, please contact us for support.

A General Power of Attorney isn’t recommended if you think your mental capacity is likely to deteriorate. If you lose mental capacity, the power ceases to be valid.

With a General Power of Attorney there are no limits on the actions the attorney can carry out for you, unless you make specific restrictions. In contrast, with a Third Party Mandate you can explicitly select what access the third party has.

You can appoint multiple attorneys to act jointly i.e. must act together or jointly and severally i.e. can either act together or independently of one another if they wish.

You can revoke this type of Power of Attorney at any time.

We won’t charge you for registering your Power of Attorney with us.

Please contact our customer services team to discuss the most convenient way to register this or pop into your local branch to discuss with one of our friendly colleagues. Please have to hand / bring these documents with you — they’ll help us speed up the process:

• The original Power of Attorney document. If you don’t have this, please bring a correctly certified copy — signed by the donor, solicitor or notary public on each page
• Account details the power is to be held on
• If you (the donor) are an existing customer, ID(PDF, opens in new window) is required for the attorney only
• If you (the donor) are not an existing customer and the attorney is opening the account on your behalf, ID(PDF, opens in new window) is required for both you (the donor) and the attorney
• Any other relevant information