Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 901 posts

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#411

Post by gnicholas »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #403
gnicholas wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they have a $50 monthly account maintenance fee, unless you have $75k on deposit, a qualifying mortgage, or $5k in monthly direct deposit. I guess the latter is the easiest, but this is significantly more onerous than any bank I've looked at.

$75K/$5K per month is a very low threshold for private banking, other banks usually require somewhere in the three digits range.

What's the additional value beyond what you'd get with a standard checking account? As GP said, this is like pseudo-private banking. [1]

1: https://www.us.hsbc.com/checking-accounts/products/premier/

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#412

Post by hfx21 »

avs733 wrote: post #367
freddie_mercury wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It isn't an automated decision-making problem. Every instance involves humans in the loop making the final decision. And that article makes clear -- via spokesperson statements -- that it is auditable and the banks know exactly why accounts were terminated.

I know what you are saying but I want to counter the interpretation a bit. What the spokespeople say is a claim…it’s not truth, we don’t have independent evidence of it, of course they would claim that. Even if they did have human in the loop - what does that meaningfully look like? Are those humans given the authority to actually overrule the decision? Are they given the evidence to do so? Are they punished or perce…

You are right and I am speaking as someone who has worked on these systems. It's hard to convey to people, as these systems scale up, the bugs scale up too. And the resources to handle them shrink. Even if the false positives are less than 1% tens of thousands of people can get effected. And things are swept under the carpet, cause the costs to corporations are rounding errors.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#413

Post by Scoundreller »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #279
raincom wrote: post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

My close friend was scammed via interac and bank closed his account, cards, and he was banned from interac even though he was the one that got scammed. Bitcoin solves that, but Bitcoin has another issue why banks win - if you are scammed with your card - you get your money back or if you forget password - you still have your money, if you are scammed with Bitcoin - you basically lose, if you forget your password - yo…

Banned from Interac? They won't let them get a debit card again through any bank/credit union? Or won't let them ever send email money transfers? Won't let them ever receive email money transfers?

(Interac is the Canadian debit card system, owned by a network of banks, which has also branched out into person-to-person money transfers between bank accounts because we don't have Venmo/Zelle/etc here).

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#414

Post by ryandrake »

WalterBright wrote: post #340
mapt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first instinct was to post a detailed takedown, and I started to go into Washington State's unemployment system eligibility and benefit criteria... but on reflection I don't think most of those things you just told us actually happened. There is a history of anti-welfare activists lying about the facts they have observed and those lies forming immortal zombie collective memories. Numerous examples in Reagan speech…

> I don't think most of those things you just told us actually happened Believe whatever you need to. But consider this: People are fundamentally selfish. Building a system that assumes general altruistic behavior is not going to work very well. Assuming people will not take advantage of rules for their personal benefit is naive. Consider politicians. Have you ever noticed that people tend to go into Congress as midd…

Just some thoughts from a fellow graybeard (if I had a beard). Take em or leave em: Bitterness about somebody else who's worse off than you getting things you don't think they deserve, doesn't add to one's own happiness or wellbeing. Don't let those example people live rent-free in your head. They're barely eeking out an existence on some US State's laughable safety net. I seem to remember you're likely a computer professional and doing just fine.

If you're one of the few people in the world doing well enough to be paying into a system rather than relying on one, thank your lucky stars for how blessed you are. Ultimately, nobody on their deathbed contemplating their life cares about who their taxes were spent on.

If you simply must be mad at someone getting government handouts without need, there's a big list of companies who use accounting tricks to pay no taxes and even get subsidies from the government. You're probably better off being mad at them than some guy who's figured out how to go fishing while collecting unemployment.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#415

Post by BLKNSLVR »

krupan wrote: post #330
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with krupan's answer below, but it depends on use-case. BTC for investment or long-term store of value. BCH, or various other alternatives (Litecoin, XRP, Stellar, cough Nano cough ), for making payments. But if you can use the Lightning network, then BTC works for payments as well (arguably - in this space anything and everything is highly arguable). If you're seriously looking down the track at using…

I'm sorry, but playing with anything other than BTC Bitcoin and lightning is just going to waste your time and resources. I'm sorry, but the last 15 years has taught us that again and again. Definitely do your own research, start with small amounts, but be very, very careful especially with anything not BTC.

Comment feels like a great example of a bitcoin-maxi. An important data point, worth paying strong heed to, but also worth understanding the reasons behind bitcoin-maxi perspectives in order to see where you fit along the scale.

Bitcoin itself has the longest, most proven history. It's the safest house in the least safe neighbourhood. It's also the best performing asset of it's lifetime so far (something like that anyway).

It's use-case has changed since it was created, and there are additional use-cases to which other cryptocurrencies cater, smart contracts being the primary example (which then facilitate a whole other ecosystem of products, of arguable value and utility to humanity).

I'm around 50% bitcoin-maxi, to expose my illogical stance :)

I also have barely a little toe dipped into that particular asset pool, so my opinion isn't necessarily fully formed or well founded.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#416

Post by nine_k »

lamontcg wrote: post #186
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…

Yeah we need strong anti-Kafka laws so that individuals can always find out what they've been "charged" with and that there always need to be an "appeal" process and businesses are strictly denied the ability to claim that they can't reveal their methods.

Listing the specific problem that led to a service denial could be helpful, but could be not. I bet that it's very rarely something like "You did , so we ban you according to the rule 3.6.4.2 of ToS". It could be something like: "The pattern of your activity is very similar to patterns of activity of 9823 known scam attacks". Or even more detailed: "8 out of 11 statistical models analyzing 982 parameters of your activity during last 48 days showed the probability of your account being used for illicit fund transfers above 0.92, and the remaining 3, above 0.57. In particular, our 100M-paremeter AI model (link to a PDF with technical details) has classified your activity thusly: (a 20-row table follows). According to the law, we use a publicly available model, widely accepted as a standard in the industry. You can inspect the model's weights at huggingface (link follows)".

Interpreting such results is a job. Disputing such results in a court, or with an arbiter, would be really hard, unless you're a practitioner of the pattern-recognition craft yourself.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#417

Post by robocat »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #315
PumpkinSpice wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single retail account is of no consequence to a national bank that has tens of millions of customers. It doesn't matter if you're spending $10 or $50,000 a month. They care about you as an individual about as much as Google cares about a single Gmail account. If an algorithm flags you as potential trouble, off you go. If you want better service, there are two ways. One is to be an ultra high net worth individual. B…

For pseudo private banking, HSBC Premier is decent if you travel often to Europe or Asia. They are basically Wise for HNWs with a dash of money laundering thrown in.

Private banking can be easier in other countries, so long as you're not a US citizen. e.g. New Zealanders https://www.anz.co.nz/personal/private-bank/

  high net worth New Zealanders from a diverse range of backgrounds. Typically our clients have at least $1.5 million to invest, or significant lending with a personal annual income of $400,000 or more. *Additional income criteria may apply

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#418

Post by whatshisface »

eru wrote: post #390
throw3823423 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a part of a system like this (a financial system that happens to not be technically a bank). The system was constantly under attack by fraudsters: You could find subreddits with guides on how to try to outright rob us. So we had teams building detection systems that tied to detect said fraud as early as possible: Hopefully before we handed the fraudsters any money. Depending on how bad the score was, there…

> Maybe we made the wrong call across the board, and lower-productivity, but far higher trust commerce is the way to go... but a lot of that commerce is losing in the market, right now. Plenty of people in the comments here want to enforce that approach via laws and regulation.. > So if we like it, we have to be willing to pay extra for it. .. and I wonder if they are taking this into account.

In the same way that nobody knows which milk bottles are full of chalk, nobody knows enough about the hundreds of businesses they interact with on a daily basis to TOS comparison-shop. The understanding of what Google could do to your online life by closing your Gmail account is near to nonexistent in the consumer population.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#419

Post by BLKNSLVR »

raincom wrote: post #377
armada651 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence such quotas exist or that banks are competing on SAR numbers? This all seems like wild conjecture if there's nothing to back it up.

https://www.bankersonline.com/ is a place where people working for banks in BSA compliance, hang out. Based on my reading of that forum, there is a push from BSA auditors to file more and more SARs. Also, anon comments like the following from an old NYT article validate what I see publicly on bankersonline dot com. Also look at another poster's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158017 "Banks are under t…

Goddam fuck that's depressing. Putting the BS into BSA.

No wonder shit doesn't work the way it should. Reporting on numbers and percentages rather than actual incidences with audit trails leading to shell companies and tax havens and opaque offshore ownership structures.

Because that takes time and effort that meaningless "numbers and percentages" don't require whatsoever.

Automation scaling is the jackboot stamping on the human face.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#420

Post by robocat »

xkekjrktllss wrote: post #113
XorNot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

The US Postal Service did serve as a bank from 1910-1966. It should simply restart.

In New Zealand the government added a bank (kiwibank) to the postal offices in 2001.

However the postal offices are now being closed.

I expect the same problem would occur with The US Postal Service shutting down branches?

Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158144

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwibank

Post reply on HN