NS&I to contact bereaved families owed £367m after missing savings scandal

Key points

• Savings and Investments bank will start to contact thousands of families affected by a missing savings scandal next week, as it confirmed how much they are owed.
• In March, the chief executive of the state-backed bank was forced out after it emerged there had been long-running problems with the tracing of accounts belonging to customers who had died.
• At the time, NS&I estimated that as much as £476m had been mistakenly withheld from families.
• That figure has now been revised down to £367m with up to 34,000 estates affected, according to a short update published on Tuesday.
• Sir Jim Harra, the former HM Revenue and Customs boss parachuted in as the bank’s interim chief executive, repeated the bank’s apology: “This issue should not have happened,” he said.