Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


FROM THE TREASURER 

A belated Happy New Year to you all. 

As the old year ends, and a new one begins, my workload as Treasurer increases substantially, although admittedly only on a temporary basis, as I begin the work to balance of the books and send them off for audit. However in 2023 my workload increased much earlier in the year when I received notification from our bank, BARCLAYS plc, that I was required to provide them with evidence that as an organisation we actually existed, that as an individual I existed, and that all the other officers of the association existed, and that we were all genuine law abiding citizens, living where we said we lived. It was pointed out in bold red letters that failure to provide this information would result in the RPGA account being restricted. The rational for this request for information was based around the responsibility placed on banks by the UK Government, and The Bank of England, requiring banks to demonstrate that they were not allowing accounts to be used for money laundering purposes. 

You may be aware, even if you take the most cursory of interest in the financial news, that in recent years several large banks around the world , including Barclays, HSBC in the UK, and a couple of the big Swiss banks have been heavily fined for knowingly allowing accounts in their banks to be used for money laundering. The amounts involved that were flowing through these accounts was in the billions of pounds, and the fines to the banks were also in the hundreds of millions of pounds. In addition Barclays was also heavily fined for allowing, and indeed being actively involved in, the fixing of foreign exchange rates, resulting in another multi-million pound fine. 

So taking all this into account they were certainly going to put all their effort and corporate might into determining if the £5,500 annual income of the RPGA was indeed subscriptions from retired Prison Governors, looking to keep in touch via the odd email, and the publication of a twice yearly Newsletter, or if instead the RPGA is really a front organisation for an international cartel of drug smugglers, who were using the account to launder their ill-gotten gains by turning cocaine contaminated twenty pound notes into clean money, to be invested into legitimate businesses. Of course, it would need to be a pretty small scale international drug cartel that only turned over £5,500 a year, and seemed to be investing heavily in a guy called Harry Brett, whose main vice seemed to be that he likes to buy a lot of stamps. But regulations are regulations, and it seems that no one is exempt. 

Therefore, I was required to provide Barclays with evidence that, 1.-The RPGA it is a bone-fide association, and that it exists for the purpose stated. I was also required to provide evidence of when the organisation came into being, and the controlling authority. 2. I was required to provide proof of who I was, and that I too was a bone-fide person. In addition, I would be required to provide the same information for all the officials of the association, who were signatories to the account. The evidence required photo ID that also confirmed the holders home address, and this could be a certified copy of our passports, driving licences plus or a letter from a bank or local authority sent to the same address that appeared on the photo ID. 

At this point I decided to use the bank’s telephone helpline to help sort out some questions to which the guidance that had been given did not seem to make very clear. When I eventually got through to someone, and that is two and a half hours of my life I will not get back, the help that I got was limited. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems the bank has not latched on to the idea that if you employ someone to answer calls to a HELPLINE, it might just be useful if that person had the skills and knowledge to actually be able to offer some help. The call ended when I stumped the young man on the other end with the question, “as part of my evidence to you that I exist, and as proof of my address, can I use your own letter that you sent to me, in my name, and to my home address, to prove to you that I am indeed who I claim to be”? I never did get an answer to that one. 

Now I am sure that many of you will think that only a fool would look to take a situation such as this, and deliberately add into the mix several additional complications. Well, never one to back off I decided that that was exactly what I would do. As you will be aware Ray London was unwell earlier in the year, and leading up to the AGM had indicated that he would stand down from the role of Secretary, and Jan Thompson had volunteered to take over the position of Secretary. Ray was a signatory to the Barclays account, so I needed to have his name removed, and at the same time I needed to have Jan’s name and details added. Also, a new committee member, Kevin Bilson, had joined us, and had volunteered to be included on the bank account, so that he could shadow my role, because, like all of us, I am not getting any younger, and it would be good to have someone else with full access to the banking. So as part of the process of providing the bank with the evidence they needed regarding anti-money laundering, I also looked to include details for Jan and Kevin, as well as for myself and Graham Smith,, and to have Ray taken off the records. 

What I didn’t realise then, but certainly do now, is that this would involve two very different parts of the banks organisational set-up, that whilst they may share a common telephone number, and for all I know, actually sit next to each other, they do not share information, and they certainly do not work on the basis of “that’s okay, I can sort all of that out for you”. So it transpired that in order to deal with the process of proving that the RPGA was not a front account for a County Lines drug gang, I needed to deal with the department titled “Know Your Customer” and to sort out the process of adding and subtracting individuals from the account I needed to deal with “The Mandate Change Team”. The interesting thing is that the information required to prove that we, as individuals, were all bone-fide, was exactly the same information required to change the mandate and have Jan and Kevin added to the account. 

Initially this process started in August 2023 when the bank first contacted me about the need to provide the corporate evidence required under law to prove we are a legitimate organisation. As you can imagine, all those involved on the committee live many miles apart, and nowadays we usually communicate via email, and meet on Zoom. So, I had to ask everyone to send me an electronic copy of the required documents. However, before I could pass these on to the bank they needed to be independently certified by either a JP, a doctor, or a Certified Accountant. Not an easy thing if you are doing everything by email, so I hit on the idea of getting the Certified Accountant who audits the PGA accounts, and to who I also send the RPGA accounts, to act as the certifying authority. The one drawback was that he has never met, or indeed seen any of us before, so it was arranged that when the committee did actually get together, for the AGM in October 2023, we would set up a Zoom meeting with the accountant, introduce ourselves to him, and then I would email over to him all the documents that were needed for certification. 

Once this was completed, and I had a signed letter of certification from the accountant verifying all the information and ID’s, I sent these off to the “Know Your Customer Team” at Barclays and waited. After about 6 weeks I heard from the team that everything I had sent them had been accepted and that the account could now operate as normal. At the same time I had sent all the information required by the “Mandate Change Team” off to them and called their helpline to check that they had received everything, and to check what they needed from me with regard to removing Ray London’s name from the account. The good news was that the process of removing Ray’s name was a very simple one, and could be done over the phone, and indeed in less than a minute that was done. Sadly, it was not so straight forward with the adding of new names as they decided that the information for Jan was not sufficient and could I send it all through again, and freshly certified by both Jan and the accountant. 

This all went off to them and I again spoke to them on the phone and confirmed that they had everything, and that it was all okay. I was assured that it was, and that it could take up to 14 days for the changes to be applied to the account. With that in mind I had intended to let the new year get started and to get the books up to date and sent off to the auditor before I tackled the next part, which was to have Jan and Kevin authorised for On-Line banking. This would allow them both to have the same level of access to the account as me, and in the event of me being incapacitated, or simply away on holiday, either of them could make payments and manage the account. 

Imagine then my surprise, and I have to say, disappointment, to receive a call from the bank asking me if they could discuss a problem with the account. Now I am very wary of unexpected calls purporting to be from the bank, (see my Computer Corner article in this edition) so I told them to contact me online, via the account. This they did, and backed it up in early February with a letter. This was to inform me that my request to add Jan and Kevin to the account had not been actioned because as the authorising person they did not accept my signature as it differed substantially from the one they had on record from 2011, submitted to them when I took over as treasurer. Once again I called the Helpline. I explained to the young man what the situation was and explained that whilst the original signature that they held on record was from 2011, I did not feel that it had changed significantly, but as an alternative, as part of the process to prove our identity to the bank I had provided a sample signature less than six months previously. His response was that I had provided this to the “Know Your Customer Team” and he was speaking from the “Mandate Change Team”. When I asked him if he could not simply contact them and obtain the information his response was to transfer me to them, and to add insult to injury I went back into a queue where I was told “we are receiving a high volume of calls, you may have to wait some time before we can speak to you”. I hung up. 

So; I am now 7-months into the process of getting two new names added to the account, and I have yet to begin the process of getting them registered for On-Line Banking. A long slog, but hey, I am retired, what else am I going to do? You may ask why I persist with this and why not just change banks? The answer is that it is far from simple, and the reality is that the banks really don’t want little accounts like the RPGA, accounts that are free to run and therefore do not make them any money, and they would get rid of them if they could. I suspect very strongly that had I failed to provide all the correctly certified information required to the Barclays “Know Your Customer Team”, they would have very quickly closed the account. The reality of that would be that if the account was closed, either by the bank, or by me, the income for the association would cease immediately, as every standing order for subscriptions would become void. As a member your standing order is only valid for payment to our specific Barclays account. Were we to change banks, then we would need to write to every single member and ask them to complete a new standing order mandate, and the chances are that not every member would do so. And so, no matter what they throw at us, we are sticking with Barclays for as long as we possibly can. 

So, I share this story with you, not as a gripe, or even to illicit sympathy from you for your hard working treasurer, but simply to demonstrate how things are changing, and how the days of being able to go into a branch of any bank and sort out a problem with your account are now long gone. There are however some interesting developments that I find do help to make the current situation a little better. As banks have closed branches and pushed people into banking online they have at least put some thought into developing ways to make the process easier. As well as using my computer at home for banking I also now use the Barclays App on my phone. This is secure, as it is protected by both a PIN and my fingerprint, and it gives me the ability to check the account at any time, and literally from anywhere. One interesting development is that I can now use the phone app to pay cheques into the account. All I need to do is open the app and go to the “Make a Payment” section, which activates the camera function on the phone. I then simply take a photo of the cheque, and within hours the money is credited to the account. 

As I mentioned earlier in my piece I have completed the balancing of the books for the 2023 financial year, and they are currently with the auditors. I will report the full audited figures to the AGM in October, and as always publish a full report in the Autumn newsletter. However the headlines for 2023 are that income from subscriptions in the year were down on the previous year by about £500 and our outgoings have also increased, specifically with increased costs for the production and distribution of the Newsletter. Therefore in 2023 we had a deficit of income over expenditure of around £850. However we retain a healthy cash balance in the account and I am happy to be able to report that the association remains financially viable, and liquid. 

As part of the end of year process Harry and I compare figures for membership based on my record of those who have paid their subscriptions in the year, and his list of members. Unfortunately, there is always a difference between the two sets of figures, but as we do this each year to difference does get less and less marked. The true figure for membership is always complicated by the fact that in any given year there are always the odd glitches with payments. For example, I have a couple of members who seem to be paying twice, at different rates, and I have the problem that the information that I receive from the bank does not always clearly identify the member from who the payment originated. 

One of the mysteries that we have to deal with are where we receive a payment in one year, but not the next, and we have no idea what has happened to cause this. In the past when this has happened we have written to the last address we had for that person, to check what has happened. However, this can be embarrassing especially in cases where the member had died. With this in mind we are in the process of reconsidering if, in future we will actively check when subscription payments simply cease, or simply remove that person from the membership list. On the other hand, despite our best efforts, we are still receiving payments from people who we know are no longer members, and as treasurer I am unable to stop these. So, as always I ask you to check your standing order, and remember that if you resign from the association, please remember to cancel your payment. 

Best Wishes to you all 

GRAHAM MUMBY-CROFT

Graham Mumby-Croft
Treasurer
 Issue No. 90 Spring 2024