Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Bank security or lack thereof.

Not getting into details, but imagine a firm with three directors Adam, Brian, and Charlie they're all listed on Companies House and they all have access to the firm's bank account.

For various reasons Brian and Charlie have now left and been replaced by David and Eric; they're now listed on Companies house and Brian and Charlie removed. The next step is to give them access to the bank account.

The form to fill out is generally something called a Mandate Change form and allows the addition of signatories to the account; simple enough. However consider who needs to sign and authorise this particular form.

If you thought that it would need to be done by the only extant signatory on file, Adam, congratulations you have a basic grasp of security; if you thought that it could be signed by any director listed on Companies House then congratulations you probably work for a bank.

Remember the bank don't have signature samples of either David or Eric yet amazingly enough it would only take the unknown signatures of these two to provide complete access to the firm's accounts. Oh sure the person being added needs to fill in their own form and provide proof of their identity, but that doesn't need to be signed by Adam either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The form to fill out is generally something called a Mandate Change form"

The mistake you are making is in filling out the form. Forms in the UK should be filled in.

Forms should be filled out only in Australia, where everyone is upside down.

FlipC said...

Ba dum bum bum :-)

Of course also unless you're in Swansea or doing so for the government or the Foreign Office

Heh! Odd thing is when speaking I'm more likely to say "fill in" rather than "fill out".