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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#161

Post by ensignavenger »

gnicholas wrote: post #142
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

What qualifies as an "extended amount of time overseas"? If you go on a vacation for 6-8 weeks, does that get you in trouble? I would think banks would want to keep big spenders who can afford months-long international travel.

Banks don't really have much choice in the matter. They have been deputized to enforce federal laws, and given penalties if they don't. To add a cherry on top, the laws are vague and require the bank to investigate, judge, and execute account closures.

That being said, if you know when are are leaveing,.where you are going, and when you will be home, you can often put a vacation note on your account, and then the bank will know you are on vacation. That is what I did when I spent this summer in Japan, using.my bank debit card because it has no foreign transaction fees, the whole time.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#162

Post by advael »

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem

It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisions made by automated systems of any kind to be auditable and explicitly define what human is held responsible and what remedies can be applied

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#163

Post by kube-system »

krupan wrote: post #146
kube-system wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handing someone cash does not create a public ledger entry

True. But now hand someone that lives in a different state or country some cash. Oh wait, you can't easily do that. There are trade-offs in everything.

I can't easily give people bitcoin in my own country, because almost nobody I transact with accepts it.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#164

Post by peyton »

nanidin wrote: post #156
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

I did something similar and my banker told me to knock it off.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#165

Post by creer »

creer wrote: post #107
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article demonstrated over and over that in some instances branch managers really did know their customers, and that knowledge was ignored by an algorithm run amuck. Monitoring transactions should not be sufficient to satisfy KYC. Perhaps this article demonstrates that the largest banks are unable to know their customers and truly act on that information. And, perhaps having those banks engage in self-destructive…

No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Or rather two departments being very good boys: these banks claim to have human reviewers. A first level of automatic flagging (with people running that) and a human review that the flagging deserves debanking (with people doing and running that).

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#166

Post by Klonoar »

nanidin wrote: post #156
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

The big factor is whether you change your address or not.

Keep your US address on there and VPN (though frankly I’ve never needed to for anything other than Charles Schwab) and you often glide through unnoticed.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#167

Post by advael »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #138
cwillu wrote: post #14

It's remarkable how totalitarianism seeps in.

Most people are totalitarian in a few ways. Some people hate drugs. Everyone hates crime. The homeless cause social issues. Some people want their religion enforced. Some people hate foreigners. Most people grant these powers to the government hoping to get their pet peeve taken care of, and are surprised when the government not only doesn't do what they promised, but turn those powers onto its own favorite victims i…

I don't see any of those "pet peeves" as justifying totalitarian policy, and people who do are useful idiots for authoritarian projects

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#168

Post by raincom »

fanf2 wrote: post #153
raincom wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK, NatWest debanked Neil Farage's account for his political views. Even its CEO resigned over her lying. "19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs" [1][3]. Of course, this site is not favorable to conservatives and their views. Some left activists' accounts are closed as well [2]. [1] https://www.bus…

No, Natwest got rid of him because he is broke, and the CEO resigned for discussing his personal details in public.

Natwest's initial response was what you said: his accounts fell below a certain threshold after he paid off his mortgage. Then Farage sought info from Natwest using "subject access request". In those documents, it is "found that an internal committee had deemed his views did not align with the bank's own. This formed part of the basis for cutting him, the document showed, alongside commercial considerations." [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quart...

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#169

Post by zdragnar »

djangpy wrote: post #125
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

Staying overseas, I also got my account locked last month when I invoiced a consulting client. Seemingly out of nowhere because the previous 22 invoices cleared without an issue. But I am properly set up for this. We initiated a refund, and then I invoiced them through another EU business I set up just for this type of scenario. Then I issued a B2B invoice to my business in Europe, from my LLC in Asia; which then pai…

If you're still an American citizen, don't you technically still owe US to taxes on that "salary"? And since you're paying it as salary, I'm not sure that you're able to deduct any of the fees as expenses from what's owed.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#170

Post by nine_zeros »

advael wrote: post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

But the productivity gainz from AI!!!

Jokes aside, we are entering a world of AI-decision hell. If it is any similar to the algo-decision hell from the past decade, humans are fucked.

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