For those of you who live outside the UK and are needing to act as an attorney for a person who has lost mental capacity, this is how I did it. It's taken me 3.5 years to finally succeed. I hope this can help others avoid the nightmare I've had.

First, I took a copy of my POA for property and financial for my mother plus my passport to my local Lloyds. You do not need an appointment, but they need to have someone there who has the security code to do this task on the computer. The person scans the POA and passport, verifies them, and then sends them to the POA department. They give you a reference number, e.g. POA 12345, plus the telephone number of the POA department.

The next day, I had to ring the POA dept. to check to see if they had received the scans from the branch and if all the necessary documents had been sent. The man confirmed they had received everything they needed, but what he told me next turned out to be incorrect. Warning - if they tell you that they will send you a banking card, THIS IS NOT CORRECT. (Two separate POA reps told me this, but they were wrong). The truth is that if you live overseas, you cannot use online banking, you will have to use telephone banking FOR WHICH THERE IS NO CARD.

(I'll omit the three weeks of useless waiting for a card that never came here.)

The next step for telephone banking is you need to set this up on the phone. The number I used from abroad was 01044 345 300 0071. before you ring them, you need to have ready:
1) your cell phone number with the international code for your country from the UK
2) a copy of your POA
3) a copy of the bank statement with the sort code, account number, etc. on it.
4) the POA 12345 ref. number

Ring the number, explain the situation and that you want to set up a telephone banking account. They will ask for the POA ref #, ask you some ID questions, then ask for your phone number. They will then send a 5-digit verification code to your phone. Once you receive it, you tell them the number. They then ask you questions about the POA document - the date it was registered and the address of the solicitor. Once you have answered those questions correctly, they will send an 8-digit number to your phone, which you again confirm. This 8-digit number is important, as once you have that, you don't need to go through the whole process again if they accidentally hang up on you - instead, you can just ring them back, and using the 8-digit code, pick up where you left off.

The final step is to register your password. This password must be 6-10 characters long, isn't case sensitive, and can't contain special characters. To do this, the person you are talking to (and who knows all your account details) will transfer your call to another person at the password interface (who doesn't know anything about you or the account details). When that person answers the phone, you say ONLY YOUR PASSWORD. The person will then spell it back to you to check it, you say "correct". They say thank you and hang up. In this way, no one at the bank knows your account details AND your password, so your account is secure.

When you ring the telephone banking section for a transaction, tell them immediately that you live abroad. You then tell them your surname, first name, date of birth and country. Their computer will show them just 2 random characters of your password, so they might ask you, "What are the 1st and 4th characters?" You tell them, then instruct them in the transaction.

Good luck. The lady told me today that it is very rare for Lloyds to have overseas attorneys, so most POA reps don't know the correct procedure. This is true. I also got cut off three times while they were trying to transfer me to the password reg. I was on the phone for 90 min in total. None of that was in a queue - it was all talking to people.

Thank god it's done. I just hope it works now!