100s of Monzo customers shut out of accounts in lockdown
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This is why banks are very reluctant to give holders of frozen accounts any real information.
I’m sure there is plenty of crappy customer service and algorithms that’s are not fit for purpose or can’t cope with coronavirus too.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/proceeds-crime-act-200...
Section 333
I could see a case for "we'll throw a plausible-but-nonthreatening status code on a flagged account." Tell the customer there was data loss and it's out of commission until the SMR-drive RAID rebuilds. But when they start responding with obvious no-answer answers and "system says no" alone, that chasnge in response style in and of itself is leaking information.
I've seen plenty of people reporting over the years "I've been blacklisted, nobody will say why" and not one of them ends with "I'm posting a followup from a holding cell", so it's not like they're pulling the plug at the last moment when the charges are filed and the police cruisers in motion. If it happens enough that ordinary people outside banking have experienced it, then I'm sure the cartels and terror cells know about it.
I feel like there's an opportunity for a sequence in a mob movie where one of the characters' debit cards unexpected declined, and he immediately excuses himself to tell his compatriates to shut it down.
Monzo
This attitude is simply shocking. To rephrase it:
"We are sorry if you feel offended about the fact that you're not able to feed your kids."
Not that I'm a potential customer, not living in the UK. But here's another company for my eternal shitlist.
This comes up every time from people who don't understand the regulatory landscape, as if it's the bank's fault that AML regulations and the legal offence of "tipping-off" exist.
All banks in the UK will do this to varying degrees. See https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/hsbc-suddenly-blocked-bank-ac...
Inevitably it always ends up with people complaining to the press, at which point the bank is blamed.
The whole system is broken: https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsx...
> From regularly advising professionals and others in this sector, we are in no doubt that the high volume of lower-value reports is due to the imposition of personal criminal liability for failure to make a report where one is due combined with the low threshold for reporting. Reports must be made (absent special circumstances) if there is a possibility, which is more than fanciful, that funds are criminally derived even if the reporter believes them to be legitimate. The courts will back a reporter and absolve them of liability to their customer even if there were no reasonable grounds to make a report, provided the reporter held a genuine suspicion
Is it at all surprising that SARs are being filed when there's this real threat of personal liability if suspicious activity was not reported?
I work in finance, are obliged to complete a number of yearly trainings regarding KYC and money laundring and understand the regulatory lanscape very well, thank you very much.
Regulatory requirements do not mandate to treat your customers like shit. Throw in algorithms that just decide that You! Are Banned! for wild and wonderful reasons and a totally shitty customer support by design.
It's funny that as soon the press gets involved, or if it explodes on social media that "this specific cae didn't live up to our high standards, blablabla".
As the article states nicely: It takes a second to lock an account. But for the guy on the receiving it's the difference between paying the rent (if she can) and feeding the kids. Such callous behavior, iced by such statements by the press drone is beyond the pale.
What can they say other than "your account has been frozen" if there's legislation that says "tipping off" is an offence offence that carries a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine?
They can't explain they've made a suspicious activity report. They can't explain what has caused the account to be frozen. And there's no way for the bank or other participants in the regulatory process to defend themselves or explain why customer X was flagged. All we ever see are the customer's side of the story.
And yes, there will be false positives. Yes, there will be consequences. That's what happens when bank accounts get frozen.
Why is it surprising that this happens when there's personal liability, though?
I agree it's far from ideal, but change here needs to take place way above the individual banks.
"Our system is absolute rubbish, we have absolutely no clue when it will be deborked?"
It's accurate. It doesn't leak information about the subject being under investigation, either directly, or by the lack of a normal excuse. It cleverly straddles the border between a technology problem and a regulatory one. And it provides plenty of opportunity to string along the account holder as long as necessary so they don't panic and move to cover their asses.
> I work in finance, are obliged to complete a number of yearly trainings regarding KYC and money laundring and understand the regulatory lanscape very well, thank you very much.
Funny, you said earlier that you don't live in the UK, which makes me think you don't understand the UK retail banking regulatory landscape at all.
> Regulatory requirements do not mandate to treat your customers like shit. Throw in algorithms that just decide that You! Are Banned! for wild and wonderful reasons and a totally shitty customer support by design.
This regulations literally say that you're not allowed to tell the account holder why their account got restricted. If you think that's treating "customers like shit", your problem is with the legs, not the banks.
As for 'algorithms', what's the alternative? Human review (doesn't scale, still doesn't work) or not doing it at all (not legal)? Automated fraud detection systems are far from perfect, but it's an incredibly hard problem to solve.