Bereavement and coping with loss

• Deaths need to be registered within 5 days in England, Wales and Ireland or 8 days in Scotland.
• If you register the death at the Registrar Office in the district that the person passed away, you will receive the required documents including the death certificate, straight away. If you register the death at a different district, the details will be passed on for the death to be registered in the relevant district. You won’t be able to get a death certificate until the death has been registered.

Once the death has been registered a funeral can take place

• Check to see if the person who died had made their own arrangements for their funeral.
• You can plan a funeral yourself or pay for a funeral director to do this for you.

You’ll need to notify places such as Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and local councils know of the death. You can do this through the government’s ‘Tell us once’ service that will notify the relevant government areas for you.

What you’ll need

• A smartphone.
• Photographic identification to verify yourself.
• Your email address and the email addresses of any other next of kin/executors.

How does it work?

• When you access the online form, we will ask for some information about the deceased customer and any next of kin/executors.
• You will be able to upload a death certificate and will. If the funeral is to be paid from the customer’s TSB account you can also upload a funeral invoice. (We are unable to accept estimated funeral bills).
• Please be aware that Adobe are a separate data controller from TSB, and any personal data you provide will be sent to Adobe and processed in agreement with their terms and conditions of service.
• You may wish to read their Adobe Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure before using the following link(s).
• First things first, we need your email address to send you our Bereavement form.

Bereavement form

• This email will come from adobesign@adobesign.com. Please check Spam/Junk folders.

Additional info

• You will be prompted before opening the bereavement form for identification. Use your smartphone to take a picture of your driving licence or passport and take a selfie. (Make sure the document is completely flat, on a clear surface with nothing else in the picture and the whole document is visible. Don't crop any part of it.
• Hold your camera directly over the document but not too close or too far away.
• Natural lighting works best so try to avoid overhead lights and turn off your flash.
• Make sure your camera has focused on the document, that you can read all of the text and it's not blurry before you take the picture. TSB ID.
• Once you have completed the reporting a bereavement form, it will be sent electronically to any other next of kin/executors for them to digitally sign.
• Once all signatories have digitally signed the form, we will be notified and will work with you to close the customer’s accounts.
• Government ID adds security and protection. There is a 60-minute expiry when asked to provide this. If you haven't managed to complete the form in this time, don't worry your information will be saved but you will be asked for your Government ID again to continue.

You are now able to notify us of a Bereavement using an Adobe form online.

To Complete this process, you will need to have the following:

• The details of the deceased, including account details.
• Law company details, including address and contact details.
• Original or copy of the Death Certificate
• Funeral invoice if applicable
• Details of where you would like the payment sent.

Bereavement form

You can call us on 0345 835 7834 (lines are open 9am-5pm Monday – Friday excluding bank holidays. We will require the following information:

We can complete a digital form for you. For us to be able to complete this for you, you will need an email address, internet access and valid Passport or Driving licence.

Your details as the person registering the death:

• Name
• Address
• Date of birth

Details of the deceased customer:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Date of death
• Last known address

We will then arrange to send a form out for you to sign and advise you on documents that we require.

If you don’t want to phone or complete our online form, you can complete the information on the link below and we will arrange to post a bereavement form to you.

Request a paper form

Call us on 0345 835 7834 (lines open 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, excluding bank holidays and we will arrange an appointment for you to speak to somebody in branch. We will also let you know what documents to take with you.

• A certified copy of the entry in the register of deaths. The registrar will be able, for a fee, to provide a number of copies to save time when you’re registering claims with various financial companies.
• We will always require a death certificate to be able to settle a customer’s estate.

• A Grant of Probate is a legal document that proves the authority of the executor to deal with the estate.
• This may be required depending on the size of the estate. We usually only require this if the estate is over £50,000.
• Do you need help with Probate?
  We’ve teamed up with Farewill, an award-winning probate service. Their specialists can guide you through probate, to help keep costs down at what can be a difficult time. Find out more.

• This is a legal document which advises the Executor(s) what a person wants to happen to their estate after they’ve died.
• If the customer had a Will, we will need to see this.

• If we need to see your identification, we will let you know.

Once we have received notification of a customer’s death, we will place a block on their sole account(s) to stop any money going in or out of their account. We will also block any collateral such as cards and cheque books as well as preventing any marketing material being sent.

If the deceased customer held a TSB home insurance policy, as TSB insurance is underwritten by Aviva, you will receive a letter asking you to contact them to discuss the next options and steps.

We will provide you with guidance to help you clear any balances on the deceased customer’s Credit Card.

If the deceased customer was an additional cardholder on somebody else’s Credit Card account, we will cancel the card on receipt of the account holders information.

We will provide you with guidance to help you with the next steps when a deceased customer held a mortgage, loan or overdraft.

Once we have received notification of a customer’s death, we will block any sole accounts and cancel any Direct Debits and standing orders to prevent payments from leaving the account.

If a customer is being removed from a joint account, you can let us know if there are any payments you wish to cancel.

When we receive your notification informing us of a death, we will add a block to the deceased customer’s sole accounts to keep them safe. We will then contact you within 5-10 working days.

Who to call?

If you’re struggling but are currently managing to maintain your payments please give our customer support unit a call on;

Current account, personal loans or credit cards - 0345 609 9283

Or if you have a mortgage with us - 0345 835 5404

If you’ve already missed a payment, don’t worry, our payment assistance team will be able to support you on the numbers below.

Mortgages - 0345 835 5404
Personal loans - 0345 600 8973
Credit cards - 0345 600 8972
Current accounts - 0345 600 8973

Information to have to hand

• Your sort code and account number
• Some details about your account, such as monthly instalment amounts or dates of your direct debits
• Your completed income and expenditure form, or bank statements so we can complete one on the call with you
• Time. Set aside some time for this call. We want to ensure we discuss all the possible solutions with you

Don't worry if you haven't got all this information to hand. The most important step is making that first call.

If you need to send us anything through the post, you can send this to:

Mail Processing Centre (MPC)
Manston Lane
Leeds
LS14 9GQ

If the deceased customer held a joint account, we will remove their name from the account on receipt of the death certificate.

We will not block any joint account and you can let us know if any Direct Debits or standing orders need to be cancelled.

If a funeral is to be paid from the deceased customer’s TSB account, we will require the full and final funeral bill. We will then send the funds to the account details quoted on the bill. If you’re using our online form, you can upload a copy of this.

If the deceased customer has a debit balance on their account, this could be offset with any credit balances in other accounts they may hold with TSB.

We will talk through other options to help to clear the debit balances.

We will require all Executors of the Will to sign the bereavement form. If there is no Will, we will require all Next of Kin to sign.