Monzo Bank getting a kicking on 'Watchdog'

[Deleted User]

I expect nothing less from the Blame Brexit Corporation and their tripe “programming”

born_again

brianposter wrote: »

However there is evidence even on this thread that bank staff regard as suspicious what many customers consider to be straightforward and rational use of their bank accounts.
In particular there seems to be a failure to distinguish between "money laundering" and other unexpected usage of a bank account.

It is not just money laundering that will cause a block. There are many other reasons.
Just because people may feel the unexpected usage is OK. As far banking regulations go they are not OK.
.
What you fail to realise is that you only have one side of these stories. As a staff member you have full access to see ALL that is going on in a customers account.
So we you can see the whole story.
Accounts are not reported lightly. You have to have good cause.

phillw

born_again wrote: »

Accounts are not reported lightly. You have to have good cause.

So Monzo has more criminal customers than other banks, who are prepared to go as far as appearing on television? Who also appear to not be very good criminals either.

What is it that attracts such a large number of poor criminals to Monzo do you think?

If a raised suspicion means you are punished without any chance of defending yourself then you really need a level of evidence beyond just looking at transactions.

I assume you will say that other banks have the same level of criminal customers, but the banks look the other way a lot of the time. Which actually sounds proportionate. Not every speeder gets caught either & nobody would try.

born_again

phillw wrote: »

So Monzo has more criminal customers than other banks, who are prepared to go as far as appearing on television? Who also appear to not be very good criminals either.

What is it that attracts such a large number of poor criminals to Monzo do you think?

If a raised suspicion means you are punished without any chance of defending yourself then you really need a level of evidence beyond just looking at transactions.

earlier.

I said how you can open a Monzo account. So it is possible that they are more targeted than your average high street bank. Who can call a customer to branch to prove identity. Cant do that all digitally.
Plenty of stupid criminals out there, and I include people who are involved in ML in that.

As I said we do not know the full picture of why they were blocked. Clearly something/someone thought something was not right.
Transactions give a good picture of the customer. How do you think ML gets picked up? But as I said, there are many other things that can cause a block.

When you work in a bank, it opens your eyes to what many people think is OK, but actually is border line or actual illegal.

I once had a customer try to claim non receipt of illegal drugs.... Fair to say that they are no longer a customer?

boo_star

born_again wrote: »

I once had a customer try to claim non receipt of illegal drugs.... Fair to say that they are no longer a customer?

You'd be surprised. I once had to deal with a call from an anxious member of staff in a branch who were dealing with a very abusive customer, and based on the account notes was repeatedly abusive, even threatening violence. Asked my manager about demanding repayment of the loan and closing his other accounts. Manager couldn't give a fudge.

No idea what eventually happened but you'd be surprised what some people can get away with, especially if they owe the bank money.

Thrugelmir

phillw wrote: »

What is it that attracts such a large number of poor criminals to Monzo do you think?

Poor? We've 16 year olds making a £1k a week running drugs around here.

Monzo is new tech. App based. Easy to open account. Minutes apparently.

There'll be no understanding of the algorithms that'll be running monitoring the movement of funds from account to account. In an attempt to disguise the source.

eskbanker

brianposter wrote: »

In particular there seems to be a failure to distinguish between "money laundering" and other unexpected usage of a bank account.

It should also be said that unhappy customers (based on threads on here) often fail to distinguish between 'investigations triggered to comply with AML legislation' and 'being accused of money laundering'....

phillw

born_again wrote: »

I said how you can open a Monzo account. So it is possible that they are more targeted than your average high street bank. Who can call a customer to branch to prove identity. Cant do that all digitally.

Very few of the high street banks require anything more.

born_again wrote: »

As I said we do not know the full picture of why they were blocked. Clearly something/someone thought something was not right.

So you don't know what evidence there is, but you believe it? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. I don't know why they bother with courts, just let police arrest whoever they think is guilty and put them in prison. Clearly there is no chance the police would arrest someone innocent.

eskbanker wrote: »

It should also be said that unhappy customers (based on threads on here) often fail to distinguish between 'investigations triggered to comply with AML legislation' and 'being accused of money laundering'....

How could you possibly distinguish when you aren't told anything and are automatically punished? Then nobody will tell you whether it was a mistake at the bank or not because they have been told to never tell you anything.

colsten

eskbanker wrote: »

It should also be said that unhappy customers (based on threads on here) often fail to distinguish between 'investigations triggered to comply with AML legislation' and 'being accused of money laundering'....

Just to prove your well-made point:

phillw wrote: »

So you don't know what evidence there is, but you believe it? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. I don't know why they bother with courts, just let police arrest whoever they think is guilty and put them in prison. Clearly there is no chance the police would arrest someone innocent.



How could you possibly distinguish when you aren't told anything and are automatically punished? Then nobody will tell you whether it was a mistake at the bank or not because they have been told to never tell you anything.

eskbanker

phillw wrote: »

eskbanker wrote: »

It should also be said that unhappy customers (based on threads on here) often fail to distinguish between 'investigations triggered to comply with AML legislation' and 'being accused of money laundering'....

How could you possibly distinguish when you aren't told anything and are automatically punished? Then nobody will tell you whether it was a mistake at the bank or not because they have been told to never tell you anything.

Nobody's disputing that there isn't much for blocked customers to go on (for reasons covered ad nauseam in this thread and others), but the point is that in the absence of useful information people (understandably) jump to conclusions that will often be inaccurate.

I'm not defending Monzo's track record btw, just picking up on a post implying that this is all about money laundering as such, rather than activity that happens to be triggered by AML legislation, which is a distinction that seems to be too subtle for some....