Money Laundering Regulations

frivolous_fay

I had something certified by my optician. I suppose it depends on what professions they allow you to get certified by... Zopa had quite a long list. It included 'post office employee' but when I tried that, they didn't want to know!

It really is a pain in the butt.

B/F just had something certified by a work colleague, who has a PhD and is a Dr. (it didn't state it had to be medical)

B/F also has a PhD, so it was a bit of a stupid situation really

Seasonshu_2

I am thinking about opening an ICICI account. Probably because I don't have much history in the UK (living here for nearly 1.5 years now) I find it difficult to get myself identified when opening an account online.

I had months of fights with my current bank (Smile) till they opened the account: needed two forms of identification and two proof of address. All authorized by a doctor/lawyer/accountant (this is the hard part). They lost it and had to be resent, etc... :mad:

Unfortuantely according to one of the first posts that ICICI does the same thing. (And probably everyone else..?) :eek:

I also would consider the Cahoot account. As I found they are a division of Abbey. Would it be possible to pop into Abbey and they could help me with the identification and opening a Cahoot account there...?

Thanks to all.
This site is excellent :cool:

Cook_County

Seasonshu - if you have only been living here for 1.5 years then presumably you are domiciled outside of the UK for tax purposes?

If so then you would save money by setting up and holding your accounts offshore and not bringing the interest to the UK. That way you would pay no tax on the interest...

Seasonshu_2

Cook_County wrote:

Seasonshu - if you have only been living here for 1.5 years then presumably you are domiciled outside of the UK for tax purposes?

If so then you would save money by setting up and holding your accounts offshore and not bringing the interest to the UK. That way you would pay no tax on the interest...

Cook_County: thanks for the hint but I have my salary paid here/having an UK insurance number.. so I don't believe I can avoid this. Also I wouldn't want to be contacted by two Inland Revenues

Ted_Bloke

Cook_County wrote:

Seasonshu - if you have only been living here for 1.5 years then presumably you are domiciled outside of the UK for tax purposes?

If so then you would save money by setting up and holding your accounts offshore and not bringing the interest to the UK. That way you would pay no tax on the interest...

But he would STILL need to do the same thing.
No easier. Even more difficult for him because he's a minor victim of travelling circus people syndrome. Something still overhanging if no longer quite so built into social assumptions and practice, basically it was "Respectable People Stay Put". The rest of us were/are travelling circus people, wanderers, vagrants. This guy's not even from another town! He's come from abroad! From Darkest Europe?! What a Funny Man!! Don't get me started on this.:eek: :mad:

About 3 years ago I had to get something like this, the bank, product, or whatever it was had a list of personages who could sign this ID, included a subpostmaster. So I took a goodly number of photocopies with all the I hereby's etc. ready typed to a subpostoffice and they had never received such an exceptional, unusual and unprecedented request :shocked: though I did after much discussion get it signed and stamped by a subpostmaster who was too grand to come and see if I looked like my photo but the clerk must have told him it was OK. Another time I got one from my bank. But they would only sign one copy!:wall: But if I'd been coming to them they would have required one themselves, and I can understand why. It's all this fiendish Al'Quaeda plot,:evil: they are going to put their money in a deposit account there you see and after 445 years that will have doubled so they can draw it out and make the economy collapse.

This whole thing is brake on the small investor, probably the biggest reason why there are such lots of people not following the precepts of Martin and the writers in the popular financial press and sloshing money around between accounts to get best rates. It could be solved and everything made more efficient if and when we have ID cards. Well yes, it could be if it were done intelligently. :rolleyes2 OK, excuse me for wasting your time. But as for civil liberties, we see you can't do much without its equivalent anyway.

dealsearcher

... ah but then ID cards are going to cost us as well (what doesn't nowadays!).

Like everything else the few are making it very inconvenient for the many who are just wanting a decent savings account. You would think the banks would help out though as they will lose business otherwise. What with loss of interest when you pay out cheques to better interest rate accounts, which take days to clear, and the cost of 'certifying' identities investors are having to calculate whether it is worth their while or not.

regularsaver1

dealsearcher, why bring up a post from 8 months ago?

Milarky

regularsaver1 wrote:

dealsearcher, why bring up a post from 8 months ago?

I don't know - but the foregoing discussion was very useful. I had precisely this problem occur today. Nationwide would not certify a copy of my driving licence for use by another building society - the Britannia. I scoffed at the suggestion that they were not allowed to provide this verification - yet, amazingly, it appears to be a general practice. I was told (untruthfully) that this was 'to protect customers'. I was also told that if it was merely to certify a copy for use within Nationwide elsewhere they would oblige. Logically that makes no sense.

First, they know me by name, and I've banked with them for years. So that ought to count for something.

Next I show them a valid dirving licence and a copy of the same.

What exactly are they being asked to 'do' by certifying this? Merely to state that this is a 'true copy' of a DL shown. Yes I could take a fake DL in and copy it which would involve me counterfeiting my own I.D. but I stress that would only be 'faking' the same I.D. as I have with Nationwide anyway. So there's no logic to this postion.

Now I got huffy, because I assumed that this was claptrap invented by the bank itself - and not in reference to anything contained in the ML regs. But Dunstonh's answer seems to confirm that ML regs actually do work like this - effectively binding the hand's of the bank.

Yet it is illogical to baulk at verifying the very same I.D. on which you are already relying - in effect they knew me without the 'fake' document'.

I was gonig to try the other banks in the high street and see if they would have done what Nationwide refused to but maybe not now...

And yet this was also posted, so maybe the truth just keeps swirling around:

Oracle wrote:

Hi, I have a Nationwide flex account.... and they state that they certify documents for no charge. I tried it for an ICICI account and had no problems.

They did ask what is was for..... though I politely declined to answer! I don't know if any other bank offers this service for free.

Can you point me to this statement?

Bisoy

When I applied for my ICESAVE account I was asked for additional proof of identity and ICESAVE said that they will accept true copies of documents certified by the bank or local post office.

I went to our local halifax branch and the lady in the reception just stamped it and signed and there were no questions asked. ( She didn't asked if I have accounts with them which she probably knew because we hold several accounts with them)

If Halifax has changed their policies now then it was great escaped.

chesky369

When I applied for the ICEsave account I was also asked for additional proof of identity and sent a photocopy of my passport WITHOUT ANY certification. Was accepted, so it must have been OK.