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?

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.

How is it acceptable for a bank to disclose how your builder spends their money ? It’s outrageous.

They aren't allowed to tell you personal information about your builder.🙄

Anyway banks breach GDPR every day and apparently give the Information Commissioner a list of their breaches.

Cross post - it isn't.

Well they did.
At least they said " this account has been used in connection with crypto currency which means it's an automatic red flag".
Maybe they aren't supposed to tell people that but by this time they were thoroughly happy that I had a legitimate bill to pay. I nearly had to invite them round to view the work.

It’s the FCA and FOS which are making banks do this. I recently had to refund a customer nearly £100k that he had paid to a fraudster. This was done over a series of days at the branch. The branch staff had warned him that it didn’t seem right but he was adamant that he wanted to spend HIS money the way he wanted. He thought he was investing in property.

Of course when he lost the money he complained. Even though it was documented that he had chosen to go ahead after being warned, FOS still ruled that he should be refunded. In fact FOS said the branch should have refused to make the transactions because they had concerns.

Just think about that - the regulators now want banks to refuse to make payments even if customers insist they want to make them.

This is going to get worse with Consumer Duty rules. If you don’t like it tell the FCA you want to retain responsibility and are willing to take the consequences for that. But you won’t, because if you are scammed you will be asking for your money back too.

If I were scammed I can 100% say o woild
not expect the bank to reimburse me.

the first time this ever happened it should have been put back to the customer and ended the issue. They chose to pay it, their problem.

I hate the nanny state and this is it to the extreme

My mother tried to put money in my account towards my wedding dress and they wouldn’t allow that either, same bank too. They said it was to prevent money laundering

I thought of this thread again today when I got an urgent alert at work (I work for a major high street bank) about a new scam that's doing the rounds. I don't even work in a customer facing role. But we all get these notifications, we all do annual training and there are many hundreds of people working in the fraud teams both trying to resolve fraud and scams for customers but also trying to educate customers as well.