New money laundering rules?

BethLH

my bank wrote to me last week asking for a full account, with evidence, of where all my money has come from. House sales, earnings, everything. Love my bank -Handelsbanken- but this feels like an invasion of privacy. Are all banks going to be doing this?

Browntoa

They are required by law to do so if they have any doubts

BrownTrout

Out of interest how much do you have with them?

Ballard

I can understand why people might think that this is an invasion of privacy but banks do need to be satisfied of the source of funds for all of their customers. Although I've never been asked of this by a bank I did have to supply bank statements to my solicitor proving source of funds for a property transaction recently under the same legislation.

JustAnotherSaver

I had to supply statements when buying our house. 
All this money coming in and going out raised questions as to where I was getting this cash from.
I had to explain the ways of an MSE member. 

Thrugelmir

BethLH said:

 Are all banks going to be doing this?

If you've undertaken unusual banking activity then yes. Banks are the ones carrying the responsibility and consequentially the fines for non compliance. 

Flugelhorn

what would trigger this?
(just conscious of fair amount of money in and out of account this year) 
It is interesting as where does any particular £ come from ? I went to transfer money to buy a house - the bank staff looked at the account and noted the last transaction "oh it was from national savings" - no-one queried where it was before National Savings etc.

Thrugelmir

Proceeds of house sale or other large transfer such as inheritance. Banks have a duty to report. All the data is accessible to the HMRC amongst others. National Savings transfers can only be made to a pre selected nominated account. 

EssexExile

I assume it all depends on what is usual for each customer. I've been with the same bank for several years and I assume they are used to my way of using my account. Every now and then I move large amounts of money about without any problems. recently I had an inheritance come in which I then distributed to other family members, other than one text asking if I was sure the bank seemed unflustered.

Flugelhorn

have had inheritance come in and then bought 2 houses for cash and sold a couple - only thing that the bank has done is send a paper bank statement when much movement in the accounts. Was quite surprised when I bought house in lockdown and couldn't get to bank to do transfer, I had to transfer 20K a  day for quite a lot of days - expected the bank to wonder what was going on but apart from a bank statement 3 weeks later there was nothing 

Ballard

EssexExile said:

I assume it all depends on what is usual for each customer. I've been with the same bank for several years and I assume they are used to my way of using my account. Every now and then I move large amounts of money about without any problems. recently I had an inheritance come in which I then distributed to other family members, other than one text asking if I was sure the bank seemed unflustered.

That's exactly right. It's Know Your Customer. The whole idea is that they know what to expect from you. If, for example, you started paying in £2k cash a week they should start investigating whereas a pub (in normal times) would be able to pay in significant amounts of cash every day without causing a fuss. That said, they would still monitor the pub for divergencies for their normal.