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

691–700 of 901 posts

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#691

Post by suoduandao3 »

bergen wrote: post #530
pauldenton wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what alternative theory do you have for all those accounts being closed?

Risk avoidance. Extremists (!) are more likely to have dubios donors. And even if they're "normal" political figures or activists, their behaviour in public might damage the bank. This being said this approach is a pretty wild one still, since people NEED banks, and there should be long duration till the expiration (except in cases of fraud, money laundering, ..)

Their behavior in public, such as their social media activity? Sounds like there's no disagreement here.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#692

Post by pc86 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #633
ArabicBaklava wrote: post #481

Bank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went ho…

That's why I have 2 bank accounts. It happened to me once in Africa, and I said "never again". I now have a backup plan for everything that is critical for my life. I have several modes of transportation, several clients, 2 computers, 2 sources of internet, several ways of contacting my family, etc. System always fail.

I've considered doing this for some time now. Do you have any sort of link between the two accounts? Maybe not directly, but e.g. are both connected to the same brokerage or anything? Is one online-only or do both have physical locations somewhere?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#693

Post by nicbou »

jacquesm wrote: post #566
nicbou wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job is to help immigrants settle in Germany. This is a serious issue for a lot of immigrants. The documents they need to open a bank account (plastic residence permit, address registration certificate) are not available to them, sometimes for up to a year. The ways around it are poorly documented and change often as German banks tighten their KYC requirements.

Ironically those KYC requirements are there on account of the United States, not necessarily the Germans.

Some are, some are not. The US tax reporting requirements for their citizens abroad made a lot of banks refuse American customers.

But there are also other requirements that are not related. The most effective workaround at the moment is to choose a EU bank outside of Germany. This skips the requirement for a residence permit or a registered address, so people can land in Germany with a functional bank account.

Another workaround is to rely on branch employees to be a little pragmatic and let immigrants open an account. These exceptions are naturally impossible to document, but they are a normal part of German bureaucracy.

A third and last workaround a symbiotic relationship between a relocation consultant and a bank employee. They expedite the process and in return they get a steady stream of high-income customers.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#694

Post by BeFlatXIII »

teddyh wrote: post #585
pjc50 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised we haven't heard more lawsuits about this in notoriously litigious America. I find it hard to believe that "we can ruin you at any time" is a sustainably fair contract term.

In order to sue anyone, you need money. To have money, you need a bank account. Therefore, if the bank takes your account, you can’t sue the bank.

Find a lawyer who's willing to split the judgement 50/50. They only get paid once they win.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#695

Post by maccard »

naasking wrote: post #663
maccard wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farage didn't meet their net worth requirement, which is why his account was closed. A bit like any retail banking product - e.g. HSBC advance, there can be some slack in how strictly the rules are allied. Coutts decided that since he no longer met their net worth requirements, they didn't want to continue to serve him. They may have decided to continue serving other clients whos circumstances changed though for thei…

> Farage didn't meet their net worth requirement, which is why his account was closed. Not according to follow-up reports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38159768

That's not what that says. The quote from coutts is even in the HN comment -

> We acknowledge that the information we reported - that Coutts' decision on Mr Farage's account did not involve considerations about his political views - turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage

That does not say that he did meet the net worth requirements. See [0], and read the article. No outlet has retracted the claim that he didn't meet the wealth requirements which is why his account was flagged for review.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/21/bbc-amends-sto...

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#696

Post by pc86 »

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…

Do you have even a single example of a bank account being closed based on political or social media activity?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#697

Post by bombcar »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #523
ArabicBaklava wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this happened in 2017.. fast forward to this account closure effect on my life: I had to go back to my country, without a degree, was not able to land any job. Unfortunately, good places require degrees. Stayed unemployed, hit with chronic depression as anyone would. Lost 4+ years of professional progress. When covid came, i was able to complete my degree online and graduated in 2021, but because all fresh grad…

Horrible. I've heard similar stories but this one's the worst by far. This shouldn't be allowed to ever happen again, such sudden closures without warning need to be illegal. The issue is banking is highly regulated but a lot of the regulation is about AML, terrorism screening and such. Not actually protecting customers from abuse but rather the other way around - banks are taking precautions to protect themselves fr…

The problem is the government deputized the banks, yet the banks are not held to the same standard that government agents are.

Until that’s fixed, this will only get worse.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#698

Post by gentleman11 »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #632
ricardobayes wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crypto" as a whole broke the circle of trust for most ordinary people. Mocking cryptos now became so mainstream that UK television ran ads, calling out crypto believers. Not to mention all of crypto on and off ramps are incredibly centralized.

>Not to mention all of crypto on and off ramps are incredibly centralized The major ones, yes. That's because most of the decentralized ones got shut down or closed voluntarily out of fear of getting prosecuted on ML charges. LocalBitcoins is a good example, first they got their site blocked in authoritarian countries like Russia. Then they had to restrict service in some US states and other more liberal places as we…

Crypto however is not anonymous. It’s the opposite: a permanent immutable public record (ledger) of your transactions and holdings. That has always been unappealing for many people

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#699

Post by phpisthebest »

ceejayoz wrote: post #661
phpisthebest wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>In a world where several thousand people have just been killed by an internationally funded terrorist group, Actions that have been widely celebrate by the political segment of the population that often aligns with the gun control movement. Actions that could have been curbed if the people that were attacked where allowed to defend themselves in stead of reliance on state protection that never came, and Israel is n…

> If you are in the US, express the desire to violently "decolonize" the US or chant "from the river to the sea" then maybe you should be investigated. The original founding document of Netanyahu’s Likud party: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform... “between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty”

The moral equivalency you are attempting to draw between those 2 statements is both ignorant and asinine.

When the terrorist organizations chant "From the river to the sea" they are clearly calling for the forced removal (at best) of all Jews from the land.

A political party that calls for "Israeli sovereignty between the Sea and the Jordan" it is clearly a rejection of the "2 state solution" but that is not a call for the removal of an ethnic population from the region. One critical difference here is you can disagree with that political party, vote them out of that government even, and express full support for a 2 state solution with out being raped, or killed. Somehow I doubt Hamas would allow that.

Israeli a western democracy has an actual framework of secular law and a history of respecting the rights of people including Arabs, Gays, Women ect

Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a history of authoritarian control, rape, murder, and no framework for respecting any individual rights at all, you bow to the most draconian interpretation of Islamic law or you die.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#700

Post by bombcar »

mpalczewski wrote: post #656
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible. I've heard similar stories but this one's the worst by far. This shouldn't be allowed to ever happen again, such sudden closures without warning need to be illegal. The issue is banking is highly regulated but a lot of the regulation is about AML, terrorism screening and such. Not actually protecting customers from abuse but rather the other way around - banks are taking precautions to protect themselves fr…

A big centralized government bank is not somehow going to be magically better than multiple commercial banks. At best it would be equally bad but more likely it will be worse than the dmv and irs put together. Going to the bank will be like doing your taxes. Maybe it would be so bad that it would solve this problem because people would have cash.

At least if the DMV or the IRS goes insane, you can take them to real court.

A government bank of last resort is probably something we need.

Post reply on HN