We are aware that some clients have been having issues when trying to make BACs payments to us. This is due to the ongoing rollout of Confirmation of Payee (CoP) at UK banks; some banks have already installed this service where others are currently implementing CoP.

What is Confirmation of Payee?
Confirmation of Payee is a name-checking service when you create a payment to someone for the first time, a check will be made on the name of the person or organisation, along with account type, you provide against the details held for that payee by their bank. CoP is a pre-payment check and as such even if you are told the account details can’t be found, you can still make the payment.

Why is this affecting payments to Stanmore Insurance Brokers?
We bank with the Yorkshire Bank. They are part way through their rollout of CoP whereas other banks have completed theirs, therefore when your bank tries to check our account details with Yorkshire Bank, your bank will be told details cannot be matched/unavailable/unable to check, as Yorkshire Banks CoP service is not yet live.

What can you do?
The CoP check is a pre-payment check so as long as you are happy that you have the account details correct you can ‘override’ the query and make the payment. However, we do recommend that whoever you are paying, you make sure you confirm the bank details over the phone with the person or organisation just in case. The team at Stanmore are aware of this potential issue and will be more than happy to confirm our bank details with you over the phone.

We’re sorry that this is happening
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We have been advised that Yorkshire Bank will complete their rollout of the CoP service in the coming months so this issue should only be short-lived. If you have any further concerns or want to discuss this further please don’t hesitate to get in touch.