Consumers wasting money in wills
The Office of Fair Trading has announced that in its opinion, consumers are wasting £millions on executor’s fees when purchasing wills from banks.
Four of Britain’s biggest high street banks have said they will improve the way they sell will writing and executor services to their customers. This comes in the light of concerns voiced by the OFT concerning HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The OFT said that many customers were appointing professional executors without fully investigating the options open to them and were unaware of the real costs involved.
It is not a legal requirement to have a solicitor or other professional to set up a will or execute a will but many people are being sold this expensive service by banks that can end up paying from £3,000 to £9,000. The cost of unnecessary bills for executor services is estimated to cost the British public more than £40 million a year. Around 40 per cent of people choose to have a professional to administer their will.
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