Has anyone else's Bank closed their account as soon as Coronavirus support cash was paid in?

born_again

daveyjp said:

A friend of mine has been dealing with some of the admin of the business grants and many businesses aren't using the account registered for their business rates direct debit for the grant payment.

I can understand why, especially if the business account is o/d and the business owner needs cash to live, but it does open up potential problems as experienced by the OP.

Should only be paying the accounts that are registered with them. Anything else is just plain bad management by the admins of whoever is giving out the grants.
If the company then wants to pass this money on to individuals then that is fine.

You have to wonder how many of these companies will go bust and not pay the money back on that basis, despite it going into a personal account.

daveyjp

The companies are registering accounts, they have to to get the money.  It does not have to be the same one registered for DD payments for business rates and not all ratepayers pay business rates by DD.

The business rates payment is a grant to the ratepayer, it does not have to be paid back.

colsten

born_again said:

You have to wonder how many of these companies will go bust and not pay the money back on that basis, despite it going into a personal account.

Agree - but if it saved lives, why bother. And even if it was the odd pretend-save-lives, why bother. In the end, lives are more important than money. 

I should add, I don't condone benefits fraud in any way, shape or form, and I support a hard clampdown on / prosecution of benefit frauds.

sassy_one

D3xt3r5L4b said:

Monzo is a personal account not a business account. 

Why wasn’t it paid into her business account?

Wrong.
Monzo has done business accounts for sometime now.

unforeseen

They do a business account with charges.

They also do a business account with no charges, I have one

margaretx9

I am aware some banks flagged up potential fraud issues when dozens of businesses started turning up in branches with cheques from their local council for £10k or £25k - some very dumb banks out there given this was a national scheme announced by the Chancellor on 17 March. So any bank with an ounce of brains might have expected these - given a million small firms will be getting such payments for every small property they occupy.
The issue here is whether Monzo flagged up an issue cos they are dumb and aren't paying attention or alternatively the OP was using a personal account to bank the cheque not a business account?
But as they don't operate business accounts -  I assume sadly its the latter!

margaretx9

margaretx9 said:

I am aware some banks flagged up potential fraud issues when dozens of businesses started turning up in branches with cheques from their local council for £10k or £25k - some very dumb banks out there given this was a national scheme announced by the Chancellor on 17 March. So any bank with an ounce of brains might have expected these - given a million small firms will be getting such payments for every small property they occupy.
The issue here is whether Monzo flagged up an issue cos they are dumb and aren't paying attention or alternatively the OP was using a personal account to bank the cheque not a business account?
I assume sadly its the latter!

Sorry  just correcting my post as it seems they do operate business accounts as above!

Was it a bank transfer from the council or a cheque paid in addressed to her? If the council paid it in that seems harsh to blame the OP's relative and close their account.

jonnygee2

When you consider the size of the High Street banks, you would expect them to dominate the forums when it comes to threads like this.  Yet it is a handful of smaller banks that dominate these forums and various other websites. 

This isn't because "millennials" use the platform. It's because they take a different approach to account verification, particularly in the amount of information they ask about for the address. 

This means that they are more likely to be used by fraudsters. It think, for compliance, they may have to be more sensitive about large amounts coming in an out than banks with more stringent checks (part of my understanding in how they use the methods for address verification they do is that their default transaction limits are relatively low - if you need to send a large amount they do additional checks)

born_again

margaretx9 said:

I am aware some banks flagged up potential fraud issues when dozens of businesses started turning up in branches with cheques from their local council for £10k or £25k - some very dumb banks out there given this was a national scheme announced by the Chancellor on 17 March. So any bank with an ounce of brains might have expected these - given a million small firms will be getting such payments for every small property they occupy.
The issue here is whether Monzo flagged up an issue cos they are dumb and aren't paying attention or alternatively the OP was using a personal account to bank the cheque not a business account?
But as they don't operate business accounts -  I assume sadly its the latter!

While I see your point. If it is a payment aimed for buisness and it is being paid into a personal account. Then that is going to flag a warning to the bank. 
So they are on the ball. Anyone should be keeping personal & buisness separate.
Remember part of banks procedures now is also to look for tax evasion. Which this could well be seen as.