Nationwide asking personal questions

[BellesAndGraces]

Tried to log in to my Nationwide app today and it won’t let me in unless I answer a whole load of questions. Confirming my name and address is correct is fine but they want to know my nationality, employer, salary etc and I’m wondering why I have to answer these questions. I’ve been banking with them for 10 years so why ask now?! NatWest and Lloyds haven’t asked me these questions so I assume it’s not a change in AML regulations otherwise they would be asking too. AIBU to think this is highly intrusive?!

Par for the course these days - they’ve hardly asked your bra size!

To build up a profile of who you are before flogging your data to marketing companies, dodgy or otherwise. Everyone's at it now.

They are meant to ask these questions from time to time. The idea is that if banks have to get this information, they will be better informed about who to target for loans/credit cards/mortgages, so that someone who changes low-paid job for low-paid job every few months is targetted in a different way to someone with a stable, well-paid one.

I’d be happier giving them my bra size than my salary. What’s my salary go to do with them?!

The higher your salary, the more likely they are to lend you money. It's probably for credit scoring as well. Information about customers is valuable now.

It was Nationwide who recently asked my daughter to confirm her ID - she has had had the account 7 years - they reckoned they didnt have a copy. She is travelling around OZ so was a right faff. My Sons have been asked to confirm their incomes by other Banks as well - sounds like they are tightening up on what info they need on you.

It's to comply with money laundering laws. It's something they have to do periodically to keep records up to date.

Pity the money laundering laws don't apply to the dodgy high street shops you see everywhere.

I had same, but I think it’s also around money laundering. I think most banks are committing to such stuff. I was annoyed at first, but simply filled in the basics and that was it. In a month’s time it will all be different anyway for me, my personal circumstances will have changed. They can make of that what they will.

This is basic information all banks are required to hold and update at regular intervals. Usually it's something they'll check periodically to ensure the information they have on file is correct.

I got all this too.

I don't use this account very much - so I took mild offence thinking it was an attempt to guilt me to close it.
There's not much money in there.

They've had on the app for a while that they need to update the details. I found it impossible as they were asking about income and outgoings and I have several accounts that have all different amounts and internal transfers so I had to guess!
Nationwide have been brilliant about stopping potential fraud though, on several occasions.

It’s money laundering laws. GDPR would be down on them like a tonne of bricks if they were collecting data without good reason / with an eye to selling these details on!

Not strictly AML, but more likely to be KYC (Know Your Customer) checks as mandated by the The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) who regulate banks in the UK.

It's part of the Anti Money Laundering requirements.

Your salary indicated how much should be going through your bank account.

Of your salary is £50k but there's £100k being credited to your account, they need to be able to account for it. Is it from a legitimate source etc?

Op, I've used it as motivation to do a Martin Lewis bank swap to FD and gain £175.
I hate the data mining too, and find the threat 'you must fill this in by 7/4/25' extremely irritating. What are they going to do? Lock me out of my own bank account for not giving them my personal deets?

I don’t really understand this way of thinking- they can see every payment that goes into your account, what’s the difference between this and knowing your annual salary? It’s just money laundering compliance so they can clearly see the payments roughly match what you say you’re earning. For example, if you confirmed your annual salary was £30k but £10k per month was regularly going into your account it would rightly raise red flags.

They do that in Spain it's a right pita

I suspect it relates to CBDCs - digital currencies which will be introduced very soon in the UK. So they need more information on you - to profile and control.

I 'm not well up on the ins and outs of money laundering so have to ask, do money launderers even use banks?
Do they not do all their dodgy dealings in cash as it's untraceable?

The point of money laundering is to move the proceeds of crime through a series of transactions and transfers to make it appear "clean" and hard to discern its origin so, yeah, it can and does go through the banking system.

They anonymise the information collected. That's how they get round it.

I was asked questions recently when moving accounts. I was told they have to ask them. They wanted to know job and salary.

Yes, they will.

I have several bank accounts and they all ask these questions at some point.

There has been a couple of threads about this (in the last six months) so quite a few people have been asked, I was myself recently and I have been with Nationwide for quite a few years. It's not my main bank account but I have some savings with them. I'm retired so I had to put that so it was quite easy for me as not really any details