A Continuing Power of Attorney is a legal document that gives authority for your attorney to make decisions on your behalf relating to your property and financial affairs. This power continues even if you subsequently lose mental capacity. It’s therefore a longer-term option for you to consider.

A Continuing Power of Attorney will continue to be effective even if you subsequently lose mental capacity. It must always be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland) before it has any legal validity.

We encourage you to continue to monitor your accounts while you’re still mentally and physically able to do so, even when you appoint someone else to act on your behalf. If you feel you’re no longer able to monitor your accounts, please contact us for support.

A Continuing Power of Attorney is recommended if you think your mental capacity is likely to deteriorate. If you lose mental capacity, the power continues to be valid.

You must have mental capacity at the time you make the Power of Attorney.

You can revoke this power at any time, even once it has been registered by the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland) so long as you have not lost mental capacity.

You can appoint multiple attorneys to act jointly i.e. must act together or jointly and severally i.e. can either act together or independently of one another if they wish.

We won’t charge you for registering your Power of Attorney with us.

Please contact our customer services team to discuss the most convenient way to register this or pop into your local branch to discuss with one of our friendly colleagues. Please have to hand / bring these documents with you — they’ll help us speed up the process:

• The original Power of Attorney document registered by the Office of Public Guardian (Scotland). If you don’t have this, please bring a correctly certified copy — signed by the granter, solicitor or notary public on each page
• Account details the power is to be held on
• If you (the granter) are an existing customer, ID(PDF, opens in new window) is required for the attorney only
• If you (the granter) are not an existing customer and the attorney is opening the account on your behalf, ID(PDF, opens in new window) is required for both you (the granter) and the attorney
• Any other relevant information