Lloyds and Halifax Closing my Accounts?

JackLadder

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I ask again - OP are you a UK national?

Yes. Born here and lived here all my life. Lloyds actually have a photocopy of my passport on record from opening. Sorry I didn't reply the first time, checking thread now.

Jack.

JackLadder

MABLE wrote: »

Thanks for update Jack, An internal score from 1 to 3 is deemed excellent so very strange they have taken the action to close accounts.

Also I personally do not believe it is because you are deemed unprofitable.

There has to be more to it than you are being aware of and it may be worth appealing for your own peace of mind.

Best of luck.

I do believe that there's something I've not been told, which hopefully will come to light when I appeal. If not, I'll SAR them (regardless of the appeal outcome, I'm curious what notes they have on my record) do you know the current address to send the £10 cheque and letter to?

Jack.

JackLadder

enthusiasticsaver wrote: »

Banks do not have to give reasons why they do not want customer's business but it may well be that it has been flagged with unusual activity and does not fit in with their business plan. Lots of people are opening large numbers of current accounts particularly the ones that pay high rates of interest. The banks are offering high interest on current accounts to expand their customer bases and offer a banking relationship which will lead to other profitable business. If they think they are flogging a dead horse then they have it within their power to shut accounts down.

If you have an account which has very little activity, does not pay bills ( normal utility bills not fake £1 or tesco internet saver direct debits) or attract a monthly salary and has money paid in and then straight out again then the bank may have taken the decision it does not want your business. I am not saying this is the reason but it may be they have looked at the fact that you have at least two current accounts (LLoyds and Halifax) and decided that you are just shunting money around for current account interest (presumably on LLoyds) and Halifax rewards.

I do not think you will be the only person in this position as it is my guess that they will all start to clamp down on this now it looks as if a lot of people are moving from ISAs to current accounts to get better interest rates.

Seen your second message. Lloyds is very obviously my main account if anyone saw my statement, Halifax on the other hand isn't. I'd compromise with just losing Halifax if that was suggested. No foreign transactions ever with them.

Jack.

eskbanker

JackLadder wrote: »

If not, I'll SAR them (regardless of the appeal outcome, I'm curious what notes they have on my record) do you know the current address to send the £10 cheque and letter to?

According to http://www.lloydsbank.com/privacy.asp:

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right of access to your personal data. The Act allows us to charge a fee of £10 for this service. If anything is inaccurate or incorrect, please let us know and we will correct it. For further details on how to request a copy of your information, please write to the:

DSAR Unit
Lloyds Bank
Customer Service Recovery
Charlton Place, C57
Andover, SP10 1RE

...and http://www.halifax.co.uk/securityandprivacy/privacy/ says:

Data Unit
Freepost NWW15306
City House
City Road
Chester CH88 3YZ

MABLE

JackLadder wrote: »

I do believe that there's something I've not been told, which hopefully will come to light when I appeal. If not, I'll SAR them (regardless of the appeal outcome, I'm curious what notes they have on my record) do you know the current address to send the £10 cheque and letter to?

Jack.

As someone has already suggested I would certainly get another bank account in place asap incase your appeal is rejected.

Also perhaps the issue is because you were transferring money back and forth between the two accounts to take advantage of the goodies.

I do the same thing but use two external banks rather than going through as a transfer between HX and Lloyds.

I have been with Lloyds for 31 years now but if the same thing happened to me at least I have 5 other bank accounts.

I see someone has already answered your query on where to send the £10 to.


Keep us updated Jack and best of luck.

murmeltier

There is something missing here that they are not telling you.

I don't believe banks go through customer records to identify "unprofitable" customers. There is always the potential for someone to become profitable in the future - by taking out a mortgage, a credit card, a savings account, insurance ... the possibilities are endless for a bank to make profits out of you.
I also don't believe that banks have resources to "review" people's activity, even with the help of technology.
Something serious has happened on your account(s) that flagged them up to a human being, who reviewed your "relationship" and for a strong reason decided to close you down and "blacklist" you for the rest of your life (no accounts at all - not even a savings account?!) - that's a tough decision to take, even for a bank. I do not believe that simply moving money around to collect incentives would have triggered this - if they didn't want people to do this, they could just change their terms of conditions. And they will know there are plenty of people doing this, not just you.

Maybe there is a suspicious transaction report involved (which by law they wouldn't be allowed to tell you about even if you asked, and I don't think an SAR would reveal this) or something else that made them "suspicious" - could of course be a complete error on their end, but I think you will find they will never admit to an error (if they eventually tell you what it's all about).

Maybe it's worth writing a complaint to them, pointing out you feel discriminated against for being blacklisted for life for no apparent reason, ask them in writing to reconsider and see whether that gets any response?


Best of luck!

nwc389

i would strongly recommend that you get another account opened asap . I have worked at the the banking group in question and I can tell you that as far as I know once the decision was taken to close an account then they NEVER backed down .
We dealt with customers who had their accounts closed for various reasons , most of them were making transactions that were flagged up for review and the bank decided they didn't want them as customers any more .
Yes you have the right of appeal but when I dealt with that department I got the impression that there was no going back so seriously you need another account elsewhere.

keiran

" most of them were making transactions that were flagged up for review and the bank decided they didn't want them as customers any more . "

What kind of transactions were these people making....mind boggles

Ed-1

keiran wrote: »

" most of them were making transactions that were flagged up for review and the bank decided they didn't want them as customers any more . "

What kind of transactions were these people making....mind boggles

In the case of someone I know that has just had his accounts closed down with Lloyds/Halifax, he was transferring a few thousand through his accounts and the payments were flagged. Although they passed the payments, they were not happy with how he was using his accounts (just to earn interest) and so blocked them and gave notice of closure.

They didn't state that he could never open another account with them though. It seemed to be a risk based decision though from a different department as they made an unrecorded enquiry into his credit file before deciding to close them. His credit rating had taken a hit with lots of recently opened accounts (for a certain Yorkshire Bank offer ).

Banks do have monitoring teams which review accounts periodically and often review recent applications by carrying out further credit checks - they are required to by law for anti-money laundering purposes.

So it seems to be if you draw attention to yourself in some way, this can happen.

nwc389

keiran wrote: »

" most of them were making transactions that were flagged up for review and the bank decided they didn't want them as customers any more . "

What kind of transactions were these people making....mind boggles

Some of them were moving the same money around between a few people who needed to produce proof to the home office that they had that amount of money in their account to get their visa renewed.
Some were doing some odd buying and selling transactions
Some had breached the account conditions
It varied - honestly just when you thought nothing could surprise you any more about the strange things that people did with their money and accounts some odd stuff would pop up !