FAQs on Power of Attorney and Letter of Authority

Letter of authority (LOA) – allows someone else to request information from us and for us to provide information to them. It doesn’t allow the LOA holder to make changes or decisions on behalf of a member. 

Power of attorney (POA) - a legal document that lets you appoint one or more people to make decisions on your behalf. You don’t need to get a solicitor to do this. You can make or register a lasting power of attorney on the GOV.UK website.  

Court of Protection Order (COPO) - When someone loses the mental capacity to manage their own affairs, the Court of Protection plays an essential and influential role in safeguarding their best interests.

If you still have the mental capacity to appoint others to assist you with your property and financial affairs, and your health and welfare, you can appoint someone under Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). However, if you no longer have such capacity, and no Enduring Power of Attorney or LPA is in place, the Court of Protection is the only avenue to appoint someone as a deputy.

Verbal authority - If you’d like someone to speak to us over the phone, we can accept verbal authority for someone else to deal with us on a call. This requires you to be there to answer some security questions and is only valid for that particular call and doesn’t apply to anything else. If you’d like someone to deal with us on an ongoing basis, we advise setting up a LOA or POA.  

You can download a LOA template from our member website, or we can post one to you.  

This can be sent to us via post or through our document upload tool on our FAS member website. 

You can post your completed LOA to:  

Financial Assistance Scheme
PO Box 287
Wymondham 
NR18 8EZ

We need sight of the full POA to verify the details. We don’t need the original but require a legible copy or scan.  

You can post your POA to:  

Financial Assistance Scheme

PO Box 287
Wymondham 
NR18 8EZ

Or you can send a copy of the POA by email to:

[email protected]

We can also accept POAs via an access code, you can find out more about using access codes on the government website.  

If you have a Court of Protection Order (COPO), known as a Guardianship Order in Scotland, you can submit this to us to act on behalf of a member.  
 
We need the original COPO to check it has been officially approved by a judge and stamped with the court’s official seal. We can also accept a certified copy, but this must have been physically signed on every page by a solicitor or notaries.  

You can post your COPO to:  

Financial Assistance Scheme 
PO Box 287
Wymondham 
NR18 8EZ

When we receive a LOA, POA or COPO, it is stored under the relevant member record. Our colleagues will then review it and decide whether to accept it.  

If they accept it, they will write to relevant parties to confirm this. In most circumstances this is completed within 5-10 working days of receiving the LOA, POA or COPO.   

This is then saved under the relevant member record so that all our contact centre colleagues are aware this is in place.  

If you have further questions about authorising someone to deal with us on your behalf or submitting a COPO you can contact our team.