Sounds great until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there. Get a power of attorney you say.. great but they won't accept unless parent comes to the branch.

This comes back to haunt you in the future.

I've done this. I'm very surprised that, in your case, the POA was not sufficient to get your business done.

I'm not sure what alternative you are proposing. This only gets much, much worse when the aging person is trying to use a password...

> until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there

Or you get elected to high office and consequently getting to the branch is a bit ... faffy[0]

[0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/pope-leo-xiv/2026/05/06/pope-le...

That's a strange one. I had to use POA for my mother in law last summer and it was straight forward.

This is still less problematic than an attacker getting in and draining the funds.

On the other hand, the best anti-scam feature for older relatives is to tell them to "go there in person". Get a call from the bank, they simply tell them "ok, I'm coming to the bank tomorrow, in person", and they're done. Scam call? Legit call? Doesn't matter, they'll sort it out at the bank.

There's a whole wide age and knowledge/competence where older people can still fall for scams (or can't know if it's legit or a scam) but on the other hand are still capable to go to whatever office/bank they need to go.