Right of Offset

The Right to Offset refers to a financial institution’s legal authority to take money out of its customers’ accounts to settle their liabilities or debts. Before using a service, the user must consent to set-off rights so that the institution can access user money and combine them with its own as needed. Unlike other financial institutions, banking institutions and taxing authorities automatically have the ability to set off.

The clients may experience a number of problems as a result of using their right to offset. For instance, if you write a post-dated check and the bank takes money out of your account to pay your bills in the interim, your check is likely to bounce and cause a new set of issues.

In more catastrophic cases, customers risk losing access to services like electricity or water due to late payments caused by a lack of money, or they risk falling behind on their mortgage payments, which could result in home repossessions or evictions.