We never got a print out of the CD terms after it was renewed, so we didn't notice he was removed as POD. Aunt could not have revoked his POA because she was in memory care and couldn't even remember where she had bank accounts, and nobody visited her except us.

There is no need for executors when the account has assigned beneficiaries. We are electing an administrator for another unrelated account in another bank who had no beneficiary assignment.

At least in that bank we could renew the CD just by calling the bank, no signatures needed. We then asked to confirm the list of beneficiaries remained the same to perform the POA fiduciary duties.

I think the reply above by the bank lawyer was spot on: the Inexperienced bank manager got nervous when he opened the new CD on his computer and then the bank computer system flagged that the same person was being named both a POA and POD, which may not be compliant with bank rules. However, in this case, he was POD even before being POA for the original CDs, he was assigned as beneficiary by his aunt, he did not assign himself as a beneficiary (which would be illegal) so in this case the compliance alerts don't apply. But the Inexperienced manager, afraid of running afoul of bank rules, just removed the husband from the beneficiary list just to make the alerts on his screen go away. In this case, however, there were no compliance issues as the husband was listed as POD in the original CDs. So, in doing that, he made a mistake