Daughter complains over ANZ bank manager's deathbed visit to her mother

Friday, 12 July 2019

Wai Campbell says the deathbed actions of ANZ deprived her mother's estate of funds needed to carry out her final wishes.

Maria Wera Campbell was hours from death, medicated with strong opioids to ease her pain, and, her daughter said, so weak she was unable to lift a pen to sign her own name.

Yet a senior personal manager at an ANZ branch in Manawatū visited Maria Campbell in her daughter Wai Campbell's home.

Without having secured signed authority, the ANZ manager closed some of the dying woman's accounts and transferred money into a smaller number of accounts – on which another whanau member was a joint signatory.

Wai Campbell, who cared for her mother, was outraged when she found out about the meeting which happened when she was out, and the executors of her mother's estate complained to the bank about the manager's actions which deprived her mother's estate of funds needed to carry out her final wishes.

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Wai Campbell, daughter of the late Maria Wera Campbell, has taken a complaint against ANZ over changes made to her mother's banking the day before she died.

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Maria Campbell's money had passed out of her estate to the joint signatory on the new account, though an audit of the accounts by the Evans Henderson Woodbridge legal firm found all of Maria's money was accounted for.

ANZ insisted its manager did nothing wrong in his bedside visit in July 2018. But Wai Campbell did not believe he should have entered her home without her permission, or made changes to her mother's banking – which upset preparations for her tangi – and how her money would be used after her death.

Maria Campbell died from cancer the day after the bank manager's bedside visit.

'She had a will. It was really clear,' Wai Campbell said. The will had been signed at the end of March.

Wai Campbell believed the manager left her home without a signed authority because her mother was too weak to hold a pen.

'My mum signed nothing,' she said.

'She physically could not lift herself in the bed, toilet, feed, shower. She needed assistance to do everything.'

Her mother was released from Whanganui Hospital on July 13, and the ANZ manager visited her bedside on July 16 after he was called by Maria Campbell on July 12. She would have had to have made the call from the hospital, to which she had been admitted on July 4.

'She entered the hospital in critical condition and left the hospital in critical condition with a life expectancy of a matter of hours,' Wai Campbell said.

Wai Campbell (right) with her mother, Maria, at home a few days before the respected kaumatua died.

Maria Campbell died on July 17.

Her discharge papers noted she had reported 'confusion' when given the painkiller morphine.

Wai Campbell said her mother was being given morphine to ease her pain in her final days.

Wai Campbell questioned the bank manager's qualifications for determining her mother's competence to make changes to her banking, and also believed he transgressed against Māori custom.

'He entered an indigenous jurisdiction at a time of tapu where there's spiritual restrictions, where I had prepared a space for my mother in that state of tapu where she's going to die. He's come in and invaded that space,' she said.

The changes to her mother's banking had helped fuel a family split, Wai Campbell said.

A letter from law firm Kahui Legal, representing Maria Campbell's estate, to ANZ's acting chief executive Antonia Watson, outlined executors' concerns: 'The estate does not accept that the condition of Maria was such that she was able to freely consent to the opening of joint accounts hours before her death'.

'Further, is it acceptable for an ANZ worker to attend a dying person's home hours before their death to enable joint accounts to be opened? The estate does not accept that this is consistent with best banking practice.'

ANZ's investigation into Wai Campbell's complaint corroborates that its staff member went to the home on July 16, but the bank said he had acted on Maria Campbell's instructions, and his visit to her deathbed was 'appropriate'.

'I would not have done anything if I had any concern that Maria wasn't well enough to make decisions. Maria was having a strong conversation with me when I visited. She knew exactly what she had in the bank and she knew exactly what she wanted done,' the manager told ANZ's customer relations manager Grant Hughes.

The bank concluded Maria Campbell's estate had not suffered any losses as a result of these actions. It did not believe it should be liable for the legal costs Maria Campbell and her executors had incurred, including paying for a lawyer to audit the use of money from Maria's accounts, which found all her money was accounted for.

Hughes included the ANZ staffer's statement in the bank's final letter to Wai Campbell, which cleared the way for Wai Campbell to make a complaint to the Banking Ombudsman.

'We appreciate this isn't the response you were hoping for,' ANZ told Wai Campbell in its final letter on June 25.

The letter did not address the lack of signed authority for the changes to Maria Campbell's banking.

In an email to Hughes on August 8, the personal bank manager said he needed a signed mandate.

The Banking Ombudsman will hear the complaint from Wai Campbell over ANZ's actions in the days before her mother's death.

'I explained I would need to make a time for her to come in as I would need new mandates signed,' he said.

ANZ spokesman Stefan Herrick would not say whether it was usual for branch managers to make home visits, or whether the bank required its staff to get signed mandates to make changes to people's bank accounts.

When the Banking Ombudsman wrote to Wai Campbell on July 11 accepting the complaint, it noted the manager intended to return to Maria Campbell's bedside a second time in order to get the new account mandate signed.

Herrick said: 'This is fundamentally an intra-family dispute about the assets of a deceased member of that family.'

'We’re confident our staff member, who affiliates with Tainui iwi, handled the situation appropriately, legally, and with appropriate cultural sensitivity, having been invited to the house by the customer,' he said.

'We’re happy this matter is being reviewed by the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, and because of that it’s inappropriate to say much more.”

In December, Wai Campbell took her complaint to Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi, who she called on to hold an Australian-style Royal Commission on banking.

Faafoi said it would be inappropriate for him to intervene in the complaint, and said the Banking Ombudsman was the most appropriate body to deal with it.

But he assured her the Government was working to identify the gaps in the way the law ensured good conduct by banks.

'Opening an additional inquiry would contribute to delays in making the changes required to ensure that more people are not affected by banking misconduct,' Faafoi said.

The Financial Markets Authority, which prepared a critical report with the Reserve Bank on bank conduct, has asked the Government to pass laws regulating bank conduct, and making it the regulator responsible for policing them.