THEY HAVE already lost billions of pounds so a penny a month won’t break the bank, but one Dundee man is mystified by the actions of one of the main players in the current banking crisis.

Bill Dower has been receiving a cheque from Lloyds TSB on a fairly regular basis for over a year now—however, each cheque is for a penny.

Mr Dower thought nothing more of it when he cashed in a mini ISA he had with Scottish Widows, part of the Lloyds group.

“I’d had the investment for nearly 10 years and had watched it rise and fall quite dramatically over that period, so decided to take the cash at the tail end of 2007 when it was performing well and use it for a deposit on a house,” said Mr Dower.

“The advice I was given at the time was ‘no, leave it with us, it will continue to grow,’ but being totally ignorant of these things I ignored that and took the cash—and I’m really glad I did, given what has happened in the past year.”

Shortly after receiving the full quoted sum for winding up the account Mr Dower received another cheque for about £5.

He said, “I believe it was something to do with taxes, so I quite happily banked it thinking I would hear nothing more.

“Since then, however, I seem to have become a favourite pen-pal of the banking group—receiving a 1p cheque each month.

“This continued for a wee while and I just laughed it off, then in January this year I didn’t get a cheque so thought that was that.”

But Mr Dower received two cheques in February, both still for one penny, and somewhat ironically, one of them arrived the very day HBOS’s losses were published.

“Like most ordinary people, high finance is a total mystery to me, but anyone can see that sending a 1p cheque by first class post isn’t very clever.

“Then there is the cost of the envelope, and I believe it would cost Lloyds about another 30p each should I decide to cash these cheques,” he said.

Mr Dower called the bank when the first cheque arrived in February and was told it was an administrative oversight and that it had been seen to—then the second cheque arrived about a week later.

“I realise that the sums involved here are tiny, but surely there could be some sort of box to tick on one of the forms when a person opens accounts giving permission for any sums of interest under £1 a year just going direct to charity.”

A spokesman for Lloyds said, “Whenever an account is closed or dormant, we will always do our best to reunite customers with their money.”