Bank Insisting I tell them why I am making a Payment to my Daughter

[Gaggley]

I usually do my banking online but thought it would be easier to set up a standing order by calling First Direct today. After going through security, I was asked a number of questions about whether I had been forced to do this, had I been told to download software, was anyone watching me online etc. This is irritating, as it is incredibly unlikely that anyone who was being scammed would say yes, but I answered them none the less.

I was then asked how I had been given the bank details. I said that I had made the transfer before, but still had to give specific details as to how my daughter had given me the bank details, that I had successfully made manual transfers to multiple times over many years. After we'd got past this, I was then told I had to tell them why I was paying money to my daughter. I declined to answer, and was prevented from setting up a standing order. Complaints department confirmed that this was their procedure and they were knowingly preventing me from moving my own money around.

I asked them how much fraud they could quantify had been prevented by these arbitratry measures, they could not answer. But if I had done this myself online, then I would not have to justify my own decisions, could just do it at the drop of a hat. Bloody annoying. But a real problem for people who can't manage to use online services, who are forced to give up their privacy by rules like this.

Does anyone have a bank that will allow you to make transactions over the phone without justifying how they spend their own money, as I would like to switch to them?

I suppose there are three camps:

1. Those who believe that if just one vulnerable person is protected then endless hoop jumping is worth while even when it becomes an invasion of privacy. Normally this group believe that the banks should reimburse people who suffer scams and fraud.

1. Those who believe that freedom and privacy are more important and that you should not protect a few at the cost of the many. Self responsibility is more important and the banks are not there to fix a mess you made yourself.

I'm firmly in camp 2

I totally agree with the bank. My husband and his siblings were gifted some money from their mother. It was like the Spanish inquisition the bank insisted on interviewing her in person. 100% agreed with them all financial institutions should be the same.

But why should they?

@Notanotherhousepost Why are most of the same?

Lots are in the same banking group.

If you decided to withdraw the money and keep into under your mattress instead, you’d need to answer questions abut what you are doing with your own money.
Baffles me why people are happy to jump through hoops for something that is basically to protect the bank , the odd idiot saved from sending money to a Nigerian prince or dodgy car sale will be in the minority and is
surely a police matter, not the bank’s responsibility.

What if this was a woman trying to escape domestic violence, would it still be a good idea to keep her on the phone while they checked with her husband.

All part of everything being controlled including what you spend your money on

@Q2C4 Well no they won’t all have
degrees in financial law, but they will have been formally trained and therefore have knowledge of the laws which apply.

The point I’m making is they do know the law and their bank’s internal policy and are applying them in accordance with their training.

Failure to do so will have consequences from disciplinary action to criminal proceedings.

Goodness me.

The reason they asked you, to be blunt, is that folks who still use telephone banking because they are not able to use an app are more likely to fall foul of tech type scams.

Either get with the times and use internet banking or learn to live with some poor sod having to read out mandatory questions to you.

Yes and we're living in an increasingly cashless society, every movement tracked and monitored through our banking and other technology. I lead a boring life, but I don't want this level of intrusion.

The majority of the people I know who have had bank fraud have not gone to the police as their bank has dealt with it. The law changed some time ago so if your account is subject to fraud it is fraud against the bank not you. (You are told to contact Action Fraud who are as useful as a chocolate teapot.) Only one person I know has been told to go the police but the bank informed the police first.

It might be your money, but your using there banking facilities, the banks have rules, you wanna use there bank need to follow there rules.there there for your own benefit anyway?

I imagine it depends what kind of fraud it is. If I am willingly withdrawing large cash amounts to give to dodgy relative, car salesperson that is a police matter as far as I am concerned. I doubt someone working in a call centre would have sufficient investment in my well being to build up a picture of financial abuse from a family member and in those instances me declaring its a gift, is just absolving the bank of responsibility. I doubt many customers relay the tale of woe they have likely been spun to get at the money.

My own brother was defrauded of large sums of money from a so called financial investor, this individual would have had millions going through his bank account from various other 'investors' .This guy was only found out when he'd spent all the money. My brother has fully owned up to being an idiot, this guy wasn't even regulated, what where the bank doing here ? I have absolutely no faith in them. The real fraudsters know what to say, meanwhile ordinary Joe is getting his bank account frozen and hauled over the coals so he can withdraw £3000 to buy his kid a used car, you might be happy with being treated like a child and have your own money confiscated by daddy, but I'm not.

And yet another fucking patronizing response that tries to deflect.

My post was in direct response to a claim that banks communicate how they’re asking why you are making a transaction helps protect you from scams and coercion. I asked where.

Certainly I see the point to many of the questions I get asked, I do expect them questions to help me. I’m paying for a service and I expect it to be customer focused and not intrusive. I understand the need to comply with money laundering legislation so, though it irritates me, I don’t blame the banks for that (though I do “blame” them for trying to imply those questions are intended to help me personally when they aren’t).

Questions needed to perform the transaction I have requested help me, your framing things as though I have suggested they don’t is more than a little bizarre and suggests you dont’ have confidence that your counter is effective and are instead trying to make my position seem extreme when it isn’t to discredit it.

Similarly, insinuating the banks have been doing this for years and I’ve suddenly got “excited” about it because you happen to have opened up a thread that I’ve responded is particularly crap as a way to try to undermine my view point. In case it escapes you - my writing a post on MN one day does not mean it’s the first time I’ve ever thought about something. This has been a bug bear of mine for around 20 years when my bank started to make transatlantic transactions difficult and became particularly relevant when it cost me several hundred pounds in lost wages and nearly stymied a house purchase 2010.

Given the recent headlines about banks using people’s political views as a reason to stop serving them, I don’t see why anyone would trust banks with information they don’t have to. They have proved themselves to be unethical and untrustworthy time and again.

I just sent DS £5k it was a gift I had promised him from an inheritance I received when DF died intestate and did it online but bank wouldn't put it through until I rang the fraud line and answered some questions, I did ask if this was a recent thing and they said they were doing it a lot more now so you don't escape it if you only bank online.

I think the OP wanted to set up a standing order to her daughter using the payment details already in the app from the many payments she had already made. So, take an existing payee in the app, and set up a standing order, without re-entering the details.

Seems like a reasonable thing to be able to do - but I've looked and its not obvious how you do that in the FD app. You need to go to 'move money' and then 'new standing order'. Barclays and Santander ask you once you've selected the payee if you want to make a one time or regular payment. and selecting regular payments sets up a standing order.

I would hope that, if it was possible in the FD app, that the customer service agent would have told them that. I've has so many disappointing customer services experiences from FD that I doubt that though...

And a real example from an hour ago.

just sold our old residential property which was in my DH name. I bought our current one three months ago. Idea was to sell his house and pay the mortgage off on mine. Simples…

so, house proceeds went into his sole account with one bank who also hold my mortgage. No, we can’t pay off my mortgage with funds from his account because of money laundering.

We tootled off to the branch of his bank to pay the money into our joint account account with another bank. Produced ID.

Had to read five leaflets on scams. Then the poor girl had to fill in what looked like war and peace. Then…….

I was asked to leave the branch and another member of staff joined the two of them. Seemingly he had to watch a five minute video on romance scams and the other member of staff was a witness to validate the original member had made him watch it.

so all this to transfer 260k from his account to an account he was actually named on!

And because it took so long it’s unlikely to hit my account in time for me to make the payment today so my Tuesday the redemption is £900 higher!

Banks have a moral duty to protect their customers from fraud and financial abuse, not just by scammers, but by their own family members. They also have a duty to abide by money laundering regulations.

I can understand how frustrating you found it, but it is a good thing that they have these procedures in place.

Did you miss where it was going into an account also in his name?

It is quite easy to get your bank account frozen temporarily because of this, so it is wise to have at least two current accounts and some credit cards so that you still have access to funds if this happens

Confused... there are 2 listed; both categorised as '1'.

Is this like there being 2 kinds of people? One that can reach a conclusion even when given incomplete data.

It was an auto numbering issue

Why in earth didn’t you tell them it was to help your daughter with the cost of living crisis. Nobody would/could argue with that.

Same here. The work was completed and I was completely happy with it. My bank however was not. When, after what seemed like hours of grilling, they finally agreed to let me spend £10k of my own money, they told me why.
Apparently my builder had once bought crypto currency. This put an automatic red flag on his account and every transaction.