Does anyone have businesses acting as representative payees? If so, how are you handling the setup of the account titling and do you still use a consumer account product when the representative payee is a business?

We set these up in a business trust account product and now questions about handling the Beneficial Ownership Certification form has cropped up. The SSA guidance on representative payee accounts is really geared toward natural persons acting as the representative payee and we're wondering if perhaps we are not setting these up properly.

Any input from other BOL'ers would be greatly appreciated!

Examples of acceptable individual account titles:
•Sunnydale Nursing Home for John Q. Public
•Sunnydale Nursing Home, representative payee for John Q. Public

Regardless, the business is your account holder.

And as such, we obtain beneficial ownership for the business. Remember for intermediary accounts beneficial ownership applies to the legal entity that opens the account, not the underlying owner of the funds in the account.

Randy and Brian - are you both saying that the business is our customer in these type of accounts? I'm confused - as we do open these types of accounts and we title them as such:

John Q Public
Sunnydale Nursing Home Rep Payee

The account is open in the SSN of the beneficiary and the beneficiary is listed as the account owner with no signing ability. Also - we do not collect beneficial ownership information on these types of accounts. When the beneficiary passes away, we remove the rep payee and the account is then handled according to our death procedures (either by estate or small estate rules).

Have we been doing these incorrect? I'm positive in past account documentation seminars I've been in, the above is how it was suggested to open these accounts.

The fiduciary, just like with CIP, is your account holder.

1020.100(c) Customer. For the purposes of §1020.220:

(1) Customer means:

(i) A person that opens a new account; and

(ii) An individual who opens a new account for:

(A) An individual who lacks legal capacity, such as a minor; or


As far as titling the accounts, refer here: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10076.pdf

I quoted the above directly from this document.

I see the titling you are speaking about in the attachment - however I believe that is talking about collective accounts. We open accounts for each beneficiary - we don't open collective accounts. In my manual for account documentation that I received from the Indiana Bankers Association it states two ways of titling:

Beneficiary's Name by Rep Payee
Rep Payee for Beneficiary's Name

We chose the top way to title. The manual also states that the tax identification number being used should be that of the beneficiary. We do CIP the rep payee since they are signer, however we do not collect beneficial ownership because we do not consider this a business account. These are opened as a consumer account.

The document above addresses individual accounts. For collective accounts, you need to refer here: https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0200603020

As far as the discrepancy between the banker's association guidance and that of the SSA, you will have to ask them.

Thank you all for the input. I see where this becomes a matter of clearly following definitions in the regulations and the FI's CIP. Handling Beneficial Ownership Certification for entity representative payees will be painful when they maintain numerous individual representative payee accounts opposed to establishing a "collective " account.

From experience, if the nursing home has the capability to do the mapping of balances to individual beneficiaries, you are ever so much better off setting up collective accounts where the nursing home is rep payee for residents collectively. When an SSA beneficiary resides in a nursing home, the account is almost always tapped heavily for nursing home costs, with a pitiful personal spending allowance (not there is much to spend it on) for the beneficiary, making individual accounts so nickel and dime as to be losers for the bank.