Q&A

Dominc Coyle answers your  your personal finance queries.

Could I benefit from Irish Nation wide sale?

I opened an account with the Irish Nationwide in 1998. Reading your Q&A column, I take it that I will not benefit from any future sale of the society as I never received notices of annual meetings.

Was the onus not on the society to inform savers that there were other deposit accounts which could be of benefit to them at some future date?

I am sure that there are many more savers like myself who received a few pounds from redundancies and put some of it in the society. Would there be any use writing to the legislators?

Mr P.B. Dublin

On initial observation, it would certainly appear that you will not benefit from any eventual demutualisation of Irish Nationwide Building Society. Windfalls will be restricted to people who are members of the society. Naturally, if you are not a member of a group, there is little reason to expect that you should benefit from any change of status of that group.

Any member of the building society should receive copies of its annual report and notification of the date and time of its annual general meeting.

Membership of the Irish Nationwide is determined by the type of account a person holds with the building society. Essentially you need to hold a share account in order to benefit. It can be hard at times to determine the status of an account as institutions give all sorts of names to their products.

This brings us to your main point. Who is responsible for informing customers of the status of their account?

To be fair, it is ultimately up to a customer to determine what sort of account best suits their needs at a particular time.

However, it seems not unreasonable that an institution would inform prospective customers that certain accounts which might suit their needs offer membership of a mutual group such as a building society while others do not. It is certainly a factor that a customer would be expected to take into account when making their decision and one of which any responsible credit union (another class of mutual) would ensure customers are notified.

On the other hand, there is no reason why counter staff at Irish Nationwide would have been aware back in 1998 that there was the vaguest prospect of demutualisation. Mutual status was adopted by institutions for many reasons, but ring-fencing a windfall was never one of those.

Is there any point in writing to legislators? I doubt it. The law is pretty clear and is seen to be fair. As it happens Irish Nationwide is waiting for a change in the law to facilitate its planned demutualisation. It had expected to proceed last year but the necessary legislation seems to have fallen very far down the political priority list.

What you certainly should do is contact the building society and check the status of your account. It may be that you moved address shortly after opening the account or even that your address details were filed incorrectly.

You could yet find that you are a member. It is definitely worth one simple call to the society.

New An Post account system

An Post has recently written to us announcing a new payment option for the child benefit payments that are currently made by the Department of Social and Family Affairs. I am not sure how this differs from the current system, which seems much more efficient. Should I move to this new option?

Ms S.B., Dublin

It seems strange that customers receiving child benefit payments electronically into a Childcare Save account such as yours should not be looking at reverting to a deposit book system. It's like turning the clock back.

An Post tells me the main advantage is that you will be able to make withdrawals from your local post office rather than having to write to the savings section - a process that can take up to two weeks.

You will also be able to make other lodgments to the account using the deposit book.

The book can be updated at your post office to take account of electronic payments made from one visit to another.

The basic features of the account will remain in place - the interest rate will be the same as on your current account, low as that is, and you will retain the ability to have child benefit payments made electronically to the account.

The one thing you will need to ensure is that you have proper identification if you are looking to make withdrawals from the account.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 10-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or by e-mail to dcoyle@irish-times.ie. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice. Due to the volume of mail, there may be a delay in answering questions. All suitable queries will be answered through the columns of the newspaper. No personal correspondence will be entered into.