Starling bank - big brother?

[Sodoffbigbrother]

I’ve had a Starling bank account for a couple of years. It’s a secondary account I use alongside my main account and I’ve had no problems at all with it. It’s always in credit, I only have a debit card with them and I don’t have an overdraft facility.

When I log in it has started asking me to confirm my contact details (no problem, I’ve done this) BUT then also my income from all sources and my job, industry etc.

It says it’s ‘LEGALLY obliged to do this so it can spot when something isn’t quite right’ - is this true?

It promises not to ‘use it for marketing purposes’ but asks you to complete the information without saying what it WILL use it for.

Has anyone been asked the same by other banks?

AIBU to tell them to sod off?

YANBU- it’s none of their business

YABU- I should meekly comply

Personally if they force me I will close the account.

HSBC did similar to me a while ago, anti-money laundering checks.

I’ve no idea but was thinking to open an account with them so watching with interest. My regular bank doesn’t do this.

I think rules on money laundering have really got tough in banks so iys probably true.

I opened a starling bank account a few months ago (for my self employment) and was asked all those questions which I was happy to answer.

Its better than HSBC who just basically called me a load and try to trip me up when explaining my income and the reasons my turnover and net profit were so different (that would be my expenses!).

*liar not load!

This will be to do with Anti Money Laundering Rules. Source of Wealth and Source of Funds is an area my regulatory body (not banking, but a regulated industry), are advising we “must do more on”. So I am not surprised at these questions.

It’s a KYC requirement imposed by law, and every bank will do this. If you have a long term customer history they will often pick this up from past interactions, but if they don’t have the data, they have to ask outright.

Complaining about it is a bit hypocritical, given public expectations on combating financial crime:

General public: It’s an outrage how common money-laundering and tax evasion is; governments need to do something to make banks scrutinise customer activity.

Governments introduce laws governing KYC.

General public: Not me! Not me! Banks should just look at the bad guys.

It's a normal question for AML purposes. Keep switching banks and ducking the question and you'll end up with no one to bank with.

Options:

A) You've told them previously and you've forgotten
B) You get regular salary/benefit payments and they've worked it out
C) They'll ask you soon

Give over. The banks can apply common sense and not bother asking if an account had less than, say, £10,000-worth of transactions a month. It's overkill.
It's like the alcohol laws: the law says don't sell to under-18s so the supermarkets add on seven years and do "challenge 25" so their staff add on another few years and start asking thirty-somethings to prove their age. It's a lazy passing on of their responsibility to the law-abiding average citizen.

Give over. The banks can apply common sense and not bother asking if an account had less than, say, £10,000-worth of transactions a month. It's overkill.
It's like the alcohol laws: the law says don't sell to under-18s so the supermarkets add on seven years and do "challenge 25" so their staff add on another few years and start asking thirty-somethings to prove their age. It's a lazy passing on of their responsibility to the law-abiding average citizen.

The obvious objections to this are:

• Common sense doesn’t have an objective existence.
• Most money-laundering starts at volumes of less than £10k per month, as funds are channeled through layering and consolidation accounts; it’s hardly uncommon for a big syndicate to use, say, 500 accounts to each move £1,000 per month in a co-ordinated manner.
• And, ultimately, everyone’s activities do matter; 10,000 people cheating on their tax by £1,000 is equal to 100 people cheating by £100,000.

It’s just that most people have a “rules for thee and not for me” attitude to this kind of regulation, whilst it only works when applied to everyone.

If you think this is difficult try giving your child £15000 towards the deposit on their new home.
This is my problem and it appears I cannot do it because I can’t pass the anti money laundering regulations because I can’t prove where every penny came from!
Ive worked in the public sector for 44 years so regular monthly payments into my one account, but apparently this is not enough!
Not really sure what to do.

Yes you are being unreasonable

They have to do this to comply with anti money laundering regs.

It's not personal.

Would you like to link to the regulations which say that banks have to do this level of investigation.

Normal. There is an expectation that they understand the nature and purpose of the account. The banking regulator (the FCA) has recently said that banks, especially FinTechs and challenger banks, need to do more to obtain this information about their customers. The specific data points are not required by law per se but it's been made very clear recently that banks are expected to get this information and face the proposed of fines or other types of sanctions if they don't. It's a pain in the arse to collect so banks are definitely not doing it for fun.

The specific data points are not required by law per se
It seems that my alcohol-sales analogy holds.

I take your point but there is a question as to how, in a retail banking context, a bank can satisfy its obligations to understand its customer and the risk that they pose without obtaining information like this. It's a bit more nuanced because the amount of information that a bank asks (beyond the mandatory data like name, DOB) is within their discretion based on their assessment of risk. That's a general rule - in this case, they've pretty much been told that they have to collect that info by their regulator.

how, in a retail banking context, a bank can satisfy its obligations to understand its customer and the risk that they pose without obtaining information like this.
And do you run any checks on this 'information' or do you just believe what you are told?

Well I don't do anything as I don't work in a bank or anything like that. On a risk-based approach, info should be verified with reference to external sources (it's one of the reasons you're credit checked when you open an account). Occupation is very hard to verify on a mass basis but if you use an account as your primary account, they can check to see if your income matches what's expected or is unusual.

On a risk-based approach, info should be verified with reference to external sources (it's one of the reasons you're credit checked when you open an account).
Either the information can be checked to external sources - in which case, do it; why ask the customer to fill in details? - or it can't - in which case it's useless as it's open to abuse.

I agree. I don't agree that banks should have to get this info because it's pointless. But it's not the banks' fault. They're just doing what they've been told to do.

There seems to be a lot of this type of thing at present. I am on the committees of a couple of sports clubs and we've just had to fill in a lot of forms to do with the anti money laundering regs, which is a bit of a nuisance but that's life I guess. Personally, I doubt many crime lords would choose a kids' cycling club in the arse end of nowhere as cover for their activities, but maybe that's the whole point? In order for money laundering to be successful it must not be obvious so everyone has to be checked? I suspect we will see more and more of these kind of checks so moving banks is probably pointless.

Wow, this is really eye opening.

So are they just ordering you to keep that money, or are they now looking at removing it from you since they suspect it as fraudulently obtained?

Bookmarking to show a friend who has an account with them.

Thank you for highlighting this.

What I don’t get about all this, is that Starling know how much goes in and out of our account. So why ask us? I got the same thing yesterday. When I went to look at the questions, one of them asks about how much is my turnover? It is preselected on the amount that has come into my account this year. Which is correct? I guess if you change that preselection, they might ask, where the rest of the turnover is kept?
What I don’t quite get, is Starling concerned about how much money is coming into the account or going out of the account? Or is Starling trying to work out, if you have other funding sources for your business account?
It is also asking me how much I predict my turnover will be in the next 12 months, which is pretty difficult, when one is an IT Contractor?

If "money laundering" relies on people telling the truth, then it's not up to much, is it ?

Not quite sure what's in the water but in the past 4 weeks I've had a serious of communications from companies that claimed to be legitimate (i.e. about my account) but which immediately became sales calls.