Letting someone step in for you when you can’t do it by yourself

When you can’t do certain things on your own, having a trusted person step in to manage your finances can make all the difference

Power of Attorney

A Power of Attorney (PoA) lets you choose someone you trust to make important decisions for you if you ever need help. It could be just one person or a few people acting on your behalf—whoever you’re comfortable with.

You can set one up temporarily or long-term. Maybe you’re in hospital and need someone to sort out your bills, or you’ve been diagnosed with an illness that might affect your ability to make decisions in the future.

To set up a PoA, you need to have the mental ability to make financial, property, and medical decisions for yourself. You can do it through a solicitor or directly on the government website.
Want to learn more? See gov.uk for details.

What can a Power of Attorney do?

A Power of Attorney allows someone to manage the donor’s finances and make decisions on their behalf when needed. The donor can appoint:

• A sole attorney – one person to handle everything
• Multiple attorneys – who can act jointly (together) or severally (individually)

If attorneys are appointed jointly, they must make decisions together. This means certain services, like debit cards, internet banking, mobile banking, and telephone banking, may not be available to them.

Types of Power of Attorney

There are four types of Power of Attorney (PoA), and each works a little differently.

1. Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA)

There are two types of LPA:

• Property and Financial Affairs LPA – This lets someone make financial decisions and handle day-to-day transactions on your behalf. You’ll need this to manage an Afin Bank account for someone else. This type of LPA gives permission to make financial decisions and carry out day-to-day transactions on behalf of the donor(the person granting the authority).
• Health and Welfare LPA – This covers medical and personal care decisions.

An LPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) before it can be used. Once it’s registered, it stays valid—even if the person who set it up (the donor) loses mental capacity.

2. General Power of Attorney (also called an Ordinary Power of Attorney)

This is for short-term arrangements—like if you’re going off on a three-month cruise and need someone to handle your finances while you’re away.

A general PoA usually covers all financial affairs, but it can be limited to specific tasks (this is called a Specific Power of Attorney).

3. Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA)

EPAs only apply in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland—and they’re still issued in Northern Ireland, but not in England or Wales anymore.

If an EPA was signed before 1 October 2007, it’s still valid.

Like an LPA, an EPA lets someone act on your behalf, but it must be registered with the OPG when the donor starts losing mental capacity. If someone asks us to add a registered EPA to an Afin Bank account, we’ll take it as confirmation that the donor can no longer manage their finances and will stop them from accessing their account.

Registering a Power of Attorney

Here’s a quick overview of the process for registering a Power of Attorney (POA) with us:


1. Customers and their attorney(s) fill out the POA registration form.
2. Once the POA has been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), we’ll need the original document sent to us.
3. We’ll carry out ID verification for the attorney. This involves sending you a secure link to upload their ID documents.
4. Once everything has been verified, we’ll link the POA to the customer’s account. From there, the attorney can manage the account by phone.

Download the form