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Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

It makes non-crime also more expensive. My bank now, to comply with AML rules, has a yearly KYC process that keeps getting more and more annoying, requiring more paperwork, a lot more of my time to fill that paperwork and me feeling like a criminal (although a long term client and the bank made enough money of me).

I have no good solution, but this is also quite crappy.

Like for one of the business accounts, the KYC/AML 'assistent' for my bank kept sending back the documents with 'this is not in English'. It was my street name. The street name is a name, it's not translatable. But nope, they were not having it. And of course it's a 'different appartment' from my business account manager so he cannot help.

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> My bank now, to comply with AML rules, has a yearly KYC process that keeps getting more and more annoying, requiring more paperwork, a lot more of my time to fill that paperwork and me feeling like a criminal

What paperwork would they even need for this? All they need to do is confirm the identity of the account holder. You either show up at their office and show your passport or ID card, or you do it remotely. This should not take more than 2 minutes.

I don’t live in the same country and the country I live in is not english language. So everything has to be translated and notarised. Like proof of address for all shareholders etc. It’s a pain and definitely not 2 minutes.

For a company, sure, I can understand that, but that's just part of doing business.

For a consumer it's a non-issue.

That’s a problem with your bank, not with the regulation. They decided how to implement aml, and it sounds like they’ve done a bad job and can’t deal with internal organizational barriers.

"That's a problem with your house, not with the flooding. They decided how to build it and it sounds like they've done a bad job and didn't handle setting up flood barriers properly."

This is a poor analogy. There isn’t a government mandate of floods and, if there were, one might reasonably choose to live in a home with strong flood protections.

That... does seem like a good analogy for this situation!

OP is not likely to be able to change KYC/AML laws, nor is the homeowner likely to be able to prevent the region from flooding, but they might have some effect on the bank (or could choose another one) if others implement those laws in a more efficient or effective way, just as the homeowner could upgrade their house to handle the regional flooding more effectively, or choose another house that did.

That's a critically poor read.

If your bank does something way outside required checks, you can switch banks. There are many.

That said sucking with one can (and logically should) make KYC checks easier over time.

Have you heard of "defensive SAR filings" by financial institutions? That's what is happening here. Banks are overly defensive: they would rather err by implementing onerous policies than getting fined hundreds of millions of dollars five years later.

Regulators are NOT providing any feedback whatsoever to already filed SAR filings, nor are they clarifying their AML policies.

It also means that more and more of completely legit businesses are just using grey platforms to avoid AML just because it's too much pain to deal with it.

Well, that’s the issu; for small things it’s often just easier to use cryptocurrency (which I don’t like) as I really just am not going to jump through hoops for flagged transactions and stuff. We have been in business for decades, never anything wrong but the past few years and especially this year, this aml/terrorism lark is becoming just bizarre.

Why you don’t like cryptocurrency if it helps you?

No reasonable business is going to use potentially illegal platforms just to avoid a bit of extra paperwork.

Especially when it's typically handled by the accountant.

There's no problem about it, a business does not necessarily need to have a bank account as long as it can send and receive payments and provide statements by request of a certified auditor when supplied with authorisation letter. My company actually uses Payoneer and does nothing dodgy or tax-avoiding, it's simply a lot more convenient that way (for example, most U.S. clients have a hard time sending SWIFT because all they used to is ACH, and Payoneer lets my company accept ACH - no EU bank would). My auditor is happy with this. I know vast majority of Payoneer uses are something crazy shady deals, but it doesn't disqualify legit users of it.

KYC / AML is the bane of our existences. My wife and I have been moving quite a lot over countries: just because we work remote and, wrongly, believed we were free.

But we've been tagged (or are systematically tagged) as "suspicious" and it's a constant headache to settle in a new country and open new bank accounts there.

They literally ask questions like: "And why did you live there? And why did you then live there? And why did you sent two times 300 EUR to these two people?" (because they're my wife's brothers-in-law, fucktard: we're talking about 600 EUR!).

And the thing is: once they start asking questions, they basically already have decided that it's a no. And they'll keep asking questions until you give up or until they give you the finger. I just sent a 49 pages (49 pages: that's not "nearly a book" but it's sizeable) document answering oh-so-many questions. Mega intrusive.

"And why haven't you used your bank card during that month?"

Questions like that. Insanity.

It's so complicated that we decided that this time we'll try to stay long enough in one place, letting time for things to "cool down". Which is insane: we're supposed to be free, but we obviously aren't.

We even had a desperate banker (at HSBC) tell us, literally: "Look, now it's going to be horrible: I'll have to act as a robot and ask you lots of intrusive questions but I'm forced to. I have to, I have no choice. I must fill this if you want to have a chance to have your account opened. My job used to not be like this, but how it is and I'm sorry about it". He was obviously not happy about the totalitarian turn society was taking and his job was taking.

It's now the third time, over three countries, that the bank first tell us: "All is cool" to then have the "committee" (due to KYC/AML) reject us. And the bankers don't understand. I tell them: "Look, it's easy: you believe you live in a free society, but you don't, you live in a totalitarian state. No harm feelings, I know it's not your fault.".

And moving targets: "We'll accept you but we don't want you to keep shares of that company in that other country to your name" / "OK, fine, we'll sell them" / "Oh, if you sell them, we still don't want you to bill that company". Fuckers. (and, no, we don't work in porn or anything like that).

And we do nothing wrong. We suspect they also think they're snitching us and denouncing us to the various IRSes: they can. We do nothing wrong. Just wasted taxpayers dollars if the IRSes look into our cases.

And waste is the name of the game: worldwide KYC/AML budget estimated at $180bn while it apparently allows to seize... Drumroll... $15bn. 12x less than it costs. All the while having employees (the KYC/AML team) working against the interest of the bank.

All these KYC/AML people are the worst of the worst type of persons on this planet: those who "just comply" ("we're just doing our jobs, not our faut, it's the rules"). They let the bad guys through the net but make life super hard for the little guys.

Just fuck the people who came up with these rules and fuck those who enforce them. I've got no respect for these people.

*EDIT*: ah yup I remember a funny one... In one case my wife's address got changed to "island of Jersey": we know it because despite the bogus country, the (snail mail) letter still reached us. I'm 99% sure this "island of Jersey" country code from the bank was a special code meaning: "flagged account". I may be wrong but this is really suspicious (not to mention stupid: because there's then a high-chance we legitimately won't get our snail mail letters).

Why do you keep opening bank accounts? You could open a multi-currency account like Wise or Revolut once, and just use that for everywhere you move.

That's exactly what I was thinking...

Wise and Revolut do not accept checks/cash. As a consequence, one has to have a local bank that accepts checks. Banks also flag accounts and close them later, when they find out that owners live abroad. So, one has to use some sophisticated VPNs to access banks.

(Not OP)

Wise has done repeated verifications for me over time, including as I’ve moved countries, temporarily blocking or delaying transactions more than any other institution I’ve used. They have to follow these rules too. To their credit, they’ve eventually unblocked or approved everything I’ve attempted, since of course it was all legitimate. But it has been a pain in the ass multiple times.

Also, sometimes you need a local bank account because of local country-specific reasons, such as developing a history with the local credit agency (this can include even regular deposit accounts), or avoiding problems from payment websites that expect you to have a local in-country account (quite common in the EU even though that’s illegal).

One of the reasons cryptocurrencies became popular even being so much riskier. The current banking system is a joke.

> And waste is the name of the game: worldwide KYC/AML budget estimated at $180bn while it apparently allows to seize... Drumroll... $15bn. 12x less than it costs. All the while having employees (the KYC/AML team) working against the interest of the bank.

> All these KYC/AML people are the worst of the worst type of persons on this planet: those who "just comply" ("we're just doing our jobs, not our faut, it's the rules"). They let the bad guys through the net but make life super hard for the little guys.

Yep.. And the bad guys aren't hurt by it. I see it similar to the entire 'ban encryption because of the children' blabber; you might save some, maybe, for a little while, at the cost of something much worse. The real criminals are already long gone anyway.

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