Most people's ability to prove who they are and reach their own money runs through a single chain: a phone, with a signal, running an app, unlocked by a face, receiving a code by text, backed by a card that needs a powered terminal.
Every link in that chain fails routinely, and several of them fail together in exactly the circumstances this app is about. The fixes are unglamorous, they take an hour, and they are almost all preparation rather than technique.
The chain that breaks
The last row is the fallback, and it is the one most people are least prepared for, because branches have closed and identity documents are in a drawer somewhere.
Two failures are worth planning for separately. A short local one, where the power is off for a day and cash bridges it. See cash. And a personal one, where a bag is stolen or a house burns, and you have no card, no phone and no documents at all.
What actually proves identity
Organisations generally want two things: who you are, and where you live.
Requirements vary by organisation and none of this is a guarantee. What is reliable is having more than one form of each, in more than one place.
Certified copies help. A solicitor or another professional can certify a copy as a true likeness of an original, and many organisations accept that. It means you are not posting your only passport, and it means a copy held elsewhere has some standing.
Keep the reference numbers, separately from the documents: passport number, driving licence number, National Insurance number, NHS number. A number you can quote is often enough to start a process even when you cannot produce the document.
Know your own account details. Sort code and account number, written down, somewhere that is not your wallet. A great many people cannot recite either, which makes every alternative route harder.
Reaching your money without an app
- Telephone banking, which works from any phone, including a landline, and needs no data. It must be registered in advance.
- A branch, with identity documents. Find out now where your nearest one is and what its hours are, because the answer has changed for most people in the last few years.
- The Post Office. Most UK banks allow personal customers to withdraw and deposit cash, and check balances, at Post Office counters. This is genuinely useful and widely unknown, and there are far more Post Office counters than bank branches.
- A cash machine with a card, which needs power but not your phone.
- A cheque, which is slow and still works.
- Somebody you trust, which is the oldest arrangement and the most reliable.
Card payments and cash machines fail together in a power cut, because they depend on the same infrastructure. That is what the cash in the house is for.
Set this up before you need it
The whole page in one list, and none of it takes long.
- Register for telephone banking on every account, and record the security details somewhere safe. It cannot be set up when you need it.
- Hold accounts at two unconnected institutions. A single bank outage then leaves you with something. This is free and it is the single most effective item here.
- Carry cards separately. Not both in the same wallet.
- Write down sort codes, account numbers and customer reference numbers, and keep the note with the document file rather than in your wallet.
- Find your nearest branch and your nearest Post Office, and note the hours.
- Keep certified copies of the main identity documents with the off-site backup. See digitising and backing up records.
- Print the two factor recovery codes for your bank, your email and your phone account. Losing access to email is how people lose access to everything else.
- Keep some cash, in small denominations. See cash.
- Tell one other person where all of this is.
The email account is the master key. Password resets for banks, utilities and government services nearly all run through it, so it deserves the strongest password and the recovery codes on paper.
If the documents are gone
A fire, a flood or a theft, and you have nothing. The order that works.
- Report the theft or loss to the police if relevant, and get a reference. Several replacements ask for it.
- Tell the bank immediately, by phone, and freeze the cards. They have procedures for customers with no documents and are used to it.
- Start with the easiest document, because each one helps get the next. Certificates from the register office are usually the simplest entry point: the record exists independently of your copy, and a birth certificate can be reordered.
- Driving licence from the DVLA, and passport from the passport office, both of which have processes for lost documents.
- Council tax and utility bills can be reissued and serve as address evidence.
- A long-standing customer relationship helps. A bank you have used for twenty years has records and can often work with you where a new provider could not.
- Ask what they will accept. Organisations have more flexibility than their websites suggest, particularly after a fire or flood, and asking a person is far better than reading a page.
This is the argument for the off-site copy. A household whose documents burned but whose scans are at a relative's house is in a completely different position from one that has nothing. See what documents to hold.
Digital only status
Worth a specific note, because it affects a large number of people and it is fragile in exactly the situations this app covers.
Some UK immigration statuses are held digitally rather than as a physical document, and are proved by generating an online share code. That requires an account, a device and a connection.
If that applies to you or to somebody in the household:
- Know the login details and keep them in the password manager with emergency access set up.
- Keep the recovery routes current, especially the phone number and email on the account, because losing access to those makes recovery much harder.
- Keep any older physical document you were issued, even where it is no longer the proof, because it is evidence and it helps.
- Keep a printed record of the reference numbers and dates.
- Generate and print a share code occasionally, understanding they expire, so at least you know the process works and you have practised it.
Raise it with anybody in the household who is affected. It is a specific vulnerability with a specific and simple mitigation, and it is the sort of thing that goes unexamined until it matters.
Helping somebody else
If you are acting for a relative, the same problem appears in a sharper form: organisations will not discuss an account with somebody who has no authority, however obvious the need.
- A third party mandate on an account, set up with the account holder's consent, is the light-touch option.
- A power of attorney is the real answer, and it can only be made while the person has capacity. See wills and powers of attorney and helping somebody who cannot manage their own affairs.
- Keep your own identity documents to hand as well, because you will be asked to prove who you are before anybody discusses somebody else's affairs.
Fraud works the other way
Everything on this page has a mirror image, which is that somebody else may try to prove they are you.
- Never give security details to anybody who has contacted you. Banks do not ring and ask for a full password, a PIN or a code, and the caller who says they do is committing fraud. Hang up and ring back on a number you have found independently, and use a different phone or wait several minutes, because a line can be held open.
- Never move money to a "safe account". There is no such thing and it is the single most common bank impersonation script.
- Shred anything with account details on it, and redirect post when you move.
- Register with the Mailing Preference Service and the Telephone Preference Service, which reduces the volume of approaches considerably.
- Check your credit file occasionally, which shows accounts opened in your name.
- Agree a household rule: no financial decision on the day it is proposed, and everything discussed with a named person first. That single rule defeats most of it.