Bank Review Question

Assuming she isn't eligible for any disregards, she'll most likely have her claim closed, and will be expected to live off the money month to month until she goes under 16k, then reclaims again.

depending on her disabilities and the amount of money she has, I'd be looking into getting passive income so she doesn't have to go back to them again.

Tell her NOT to update capital through the journal just now!!

She must wait for her review phone call. What will then happen is her claim will stay open but payments suspended but she will have her "to do" function open.

Her case will be sent for enhanced review and she will be asked to upload all statements going right back til she first hit 16k. This applies even if it's 5yr, 10yr, whatever.

She will then need to wait many, many months for them to work out the overpayment.

Pls don't worry about big fines - this is not on the cards at all unless she is called for an interview under caution. And that will only happen if there is obvious attempt to cover up capital. Really, they just want the money back.

This will be taken back by working out affordable payments if the lump sum is too big.

I was wrongly advised in the same sitch as your pal to update capital on the journal. This closed the claim and prevented the review team doing its work.

And, so far, i have been waiting for 3 months for them to request the statements they need to re calculate. No journal access, no upload facility. Nightmare!

She should have been asked to upload 4 months statements just now plus a pic of herself holding up ID.

After she has done that, in a few days she will get a message on her journal to say she has a telephone appointment with "UCR agents" on a certain date and time.

As long as it says "UCR agents" this is just a basic review by the standard review team and she won't be under any fraud investigations at this stage.

She will be asked questions about her capital and certain transactions.

After that, it is very likely that her case will be passed to the enhanced review team. Again, this is not a fraud investigation team. It is just a more thorough review.

A message will likely pop up in her journal saying something like "we need to check your whole claim for the last (X many years) We understand you might need more time to get this info to us so we are giving you (X amount of days) I will create a series of to dos to upload statements. Pls let me know if you need more time.

I would think further payments will be suspended at this point as 16k has been breeched.

Your friend will then need to wait. She can expect more phone calls. Some might be quite searching.

It will take many months for them to recalculate the overpayment.

I guess (but i don't know for sure) that, once they havd all the information they need from her, the claim will close because the 16k has been exceeded so there is no entitlement. They will want to close it as soon as they can. Once that upload "to do" section is finished with, the claim will likely close.

Frustratingly, they will be able to communicate with her via the journal but she won't be able to reply once they close the claim.

Once her capital drops (and if she has a large lump sum to pay back, it will drop) then she can claim again.

It probably is a good idea for her to put a note in her journal to say she has exceeded 16k just so the team know they have work to do..

Just don't use the update capital function in the account. It was a member of the review team who advised me (wrongly) to do that.