What is a Bank Mandate? A simple (but complete) guide

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Posted on
February 16, 2024
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What is a Bank Mandate? A simple (but complete) guide

What is a bank mandate?

A bank mandate, or account signatory, is a person in your business who is authorised to manage your bank account. Most banks offer a range of options dependent on whether you are a business or commercial banking customer. Account signatories can:

  • View all balances and transactions
  • Set up payments
  • Sign up for new financial products and services
  • Add or remove other bank mandates

Note: All account signatories are officially named as individuals on your business bank account. You can’t list companies on your bank mandate.

How to set up or change a bank mandate

Most banks require you to call your relationship manager or to ring up their customer services. You can’t set up a mandate or add or remove people from your bank mandate through regular online banking. Any changes on your mandate may take a few weeks to take effect.

Can I add users without making them an account signatory?

You can add users to your account without making changes to your bank mandate, provided you are a commercial banking customer (i.e. Natwest Bankline or Barclays.Net). As a regular business banking customer you can only add more people to your bank account by making them an account signatory. 

Advantages of a bank mandate

Once a bank mandate has been ratified, you will be given your own login and key fob with which to access your bank accounts, removing the need to share banking logins among your finance team.

Most banks also offer a number of different access types. You might be given permission to set up payments, for example, but not to authorise payments, or you may only be given permission to view the bank account in question. These permissions can be tailored to your needs, making a bank mandate a flexible option. For example, Barclays offer dual authorisation upon mandate change.

If you're an accountant, steer clear of becoming a bank signatory

As accounting firms grow and take on more and more clients, bank mandates can quickly become complicated. You might, for example, have two clients who use the same bank, so you now have two different logins and key fobs to keep track of. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which you enter the wrong details too many times and end up locking a client’s account.

Realistically, your clients will use a number of different banks, each with their own payment flows and permissions. Additionally, there is no universal standard for payment files, as each bank accepts a slightly different format. All of this adds up to extra training for your staff, and an even greater risk of making a costly mistake. 

As an alternative to bank mandates, accounting firms could make use of client accounts or tools such as Telleroo that let you securely make payments on behalf of clients.

Disadvantages of having too many signatories on your bank mandate

Being included on a bank mandate is a huge responsibility for the person named as the account signatory as they can communicate with the bank on your business's behalf. Its important to only add people to your bank mandate who you fully trust to handle your finances. A few other things to consider:

  • Setting up a bank mandate can also involve a lot of paperwork, as well as an average wait time of a few weeks
  • Best not to add any external consultants to your bank mandate, i.e. accountants or legal advisor
  • Keep in mind that the bank mandate can only include private individuals and not companies

There are options available to you when looking for ways to delegate your business's finance with adding people to your bank mandate.

Alternatives to adding people to bank mandates

You either sign up to become a corporate customer or you take advantage of a modern commercial payments systems such as Telleroo. Using a Corporate Banking System can be clunky. Instead, we have designed a clean user interface allowing you to to add or remove users easily, whilst maintaining security. With Telleroo you can add as many users as you’d like and you can allocate various access levels such as:

  • Read only access
  • Submit payments for authorisation only
  • Authorise payments
  • Admin access

Want to see how we can make your payments pain free? Sign your business up for Telleroo today or, if you're an accountant or bookkeeper in practice, check out our partner programme.