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The UK’s state-owned savings giant is facing mounting backlash over its handling bereaved families’ savings.
National Savings and Investments (NS&I) – formerly called the Post Office Savings Bank – has faced criticism for leaving families of deceased savers forced to call in lawyers to claw back their rightful cash.
The Treasury-backed vehicle, which holds around £250bn for more than 26m British savers, offers both traditional interest-earning accounts and the chance to win tax-free prizes through its Premium Bonds.
But the body has been hit with a storm of complaints in the last year as controversy swelled over its poor customer service for bereaved savers. Some saving customers at the NS&I have been forced to pay fines to the HMRC following receiving incorrect information from call handlers, according to the Telegraph.
Meanwhile, some have missed out on home purchases and claim to have been denied thousands in lost interest due to delays in the money of deceased family members being released.
Savings bank: Customers did not receive service ‘they should expect’
An NS&I spokesperson said: “We recognise that dealing with bereavement can be challenging and would like to apologise to anyone who has not received the customer service from NS&I that they should expect, particularly at such a sensitive time.”
One specific failure from NS&I was listed as blocking a widower from accessing his late wife’s premium bonds.
It comes amid a bruising period for the body, which is currently under fire for its £3bn modernisation strategy dubbed “Project Rainbow,” which is four years behind schedule.
The controversy centres on leadership allegedly ignoring critical technical risks, leaving the data of 25m customers reliant on an ageing core system and an outsourced provider that the bank is struggling to replace.
This back-office turmoil has coincided with a dip in customer satisfaction and a recent reduction in the Premium Bonds prize fund rate, making the institution a focal point for both government waste and operational instability.
Andrew Griffith, the shadow business and trade secretary, said: “Poor performance and a botched digital transformation means that NS&I are short-changing savers at a time when raising money for the Government has never been more needed.
“Delivering a simple set of government-backed savings products should not be this hard. The private sector does that every day.”