Bank withholding payment - basic account

PintorUK

Hi,

To briefly explain my situation, I started a new job in August and because of an issue between my old bank (that unfortunately I cannot disclose, and trust me I really want to) and my employer, I haven't been paid for all these months plus my joining fee. Before this, I had a job that basically paid enough to survive but could never make any savings. This situation led me to get a credit score worse than a potato due to late payments etc etc.

Now, due to my ridiculous credit score, I opened a basic account with Santander and my employer set up the payment to this account. Now, because it is a considerable amount, the bank is withholding it for now because it says the account needs to be "filtered".. I have no idea exactly what this means, I never had a single pound in this account and I understand that this is a weird sum of money to have in a basic account but are they allowed to withhold the money?

It should have been paid yesterday already and I have been told I will just have to wait.

SeaDweller

Filtered is code for security checks I'm afraid. They are allowed to hold the money for a period of time (someone else can say how long). It sounds like your employer sent payment of all months to date which on a new account would be enough to trigger alarm bells for money laundering, crime etc. Once it is cleared you'll have access to the money but the bank can't advise much else to you for security reasons. Sorry about that.

PintorUK

Thank you!

Yes, it is close to 50k so I suppose it could trigger that "alarm bell" you mentioned, hopefully someone will be able to say how long do these take usually, this is becoming a nightmare.

~Beanie~

So you've gone from earning peanuts to a job where you have earned c50K since August? No wonder they are suspicious and suspect money laundering!!

PintorUK

Well not peanuts, it was £40k but yes, the difference is considerable and I understand that it may trigger all kinds of security alarms.

Mind that those 50k include £15k as an emergency payment after chasing my employer every day so technically, only ~35k are mine. And I guess a basic account is not the right account for this kind of money but still, when I opened it in the branch, they were very clear that there wouldn't be any limits and I warned them to expect a large transaction coming in.

agrinnall

If your employer is a reputable organisation then I wouldn't expect it to take long to clear.

What I'm more interested in is the "joining fee" you refer to in your first post - is this for joining the bank (a fee I've never heard of) or for joining your employer (possibly an illegal charge)?

PintorUK

Sorry, I guess I could have been more clear about that, every employee receives a signing fee when we join the company (when we sign the contract) and the employer is as reputable as it can get, I don't feel comfortable saying who is it but it is one of the biggest tech companies.

Edit: I think when I said signing fee, I should have said signing bonus.

Ben8282

I am really wondering what the 'issue' between your old bank and this employer could possibly be?
I have never heard of such a thing or something that could prevent an employee being paid for 4 months. There are laws which require wages to be paid on time and it is impossible to believe that you have simply sat back and gone without any income for 4 months because your employer has an 'issue' with a bank! This is especially odd in respect of an individual being paid a salary in excess of £100k pa and who was so desirable to the employer that the employer paid them a £15k bonus just for starting work. And £15k joining bonus for every employee?

PintorUK

I can't really go much into that situation with the old bank because there is a legal dispute between both entities at the moment, basically we provide the bank a service, the bank considered that there was a breach of contract and stopped providing the services back to us (which includes staff payments, how this is processed I don't know). However, there wasn't any breach of contract and there is a lawsuit going on, this is as much as I can say unfortunately (and honestly, I don't know much more other than which entities I'm talking about).

The £15k was an emergency payment that my employer did to me to help with my expenses (this was done to Santander in the day I received my details as soon as I opened the account).

The joining bonus is £7k and yes, every employee gets it.

I didn't sit back, I kept chasing them and kept being promised this and that by HR, however, as you may understand, it is not in my best interest to get on a legal dispute with my employer either. The problem is that the bank kept delaying all our payments. I thought opening a new account in a different back would help me sort this out, I just wasn't counting with this delay, and again, the point of this post was to understand if there is any estimate of how long these security checks take.

xylophone

You are an employee of Anyco ( a well known company it appears)- presumably you can prove this to Santander.

You now have a pay slip showing your last month's salary and arrears of salary?

This can be produced at your local branch?

societys_child

I think you should delete the first line of your post, don't think the op wanted that information posting online!