New Employment Pre-Screening - my rights - Please help?

elsien

Quoting your example, disability is a protected characteristic in employment checks. Finances aren’t.

I wouldn’t like the request either, and it’s a bit of a silly one when many people have several bank accounts.
But if you raise it with them and they insist, your options are to send a redacted statement as suggested previously or to decline the job.

And just to comment on MalMonroe’s point, it’s very unlikely they are being “sneaky” or really suspect that you have lied. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong that they want to check. 

DullGreyGuy

elsien said:

Quoting your example, disability is a protected characteristic in employment checks. Finances aren’t.

I wouldn’t like the request either, and it’s a bit of a silly one when many people have several bank accounts.
But if you raise it with them and they insist, your options are to send a redacted statement as suggested previously or to decline the job.

And just to comment on MalMonroe’s point, it’s very unlikely they are being “sneaky” or really suspect that you have lied. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong that they want to check. 

They normally ask for statements for all your bank accounts... obviously you could lie and say you've sent them all when you've intentionally not sent the one in the Cayman Islands where your Chinese Spy money goes but the same goes for HMRC and every other time you are asked to declare something... some people lie. 

MattMattMattUK

Having had to do similar checks in the past as well as SC at one point I really struggle to get my head around why some people have such an issue with them, they come with the territory with certain professions, levels of seniority or even as part of being a subcontractor to certain sectors.

Brie

The only situation I'm aware of where health records might be requested are when there is some sort of medical cover or if  job is essentially physical.  Some companies also have their own team do the actual medical screening. My understanding is that this is "for information only" rather than being used as a way to eliminate "unworthy" candidates.

As for data protection - every large company I've worked at that has a foreign arm of any sort imposes UK level GDPR on them as a minimum.  Of course this is only of use if serious hackers can't get around their security or no one leaves an open laptop on a train.  (both of which has happened in the UK!)

DullGreyGuy

Brie said:

The only situation I'm aware of where health records might be requested are when there is some sort of medical cover or if  job is essentially physical.  

Never heard of it at offer stage because there is some form of medical cover. If the job comes with a more standard level of PMI then there will be a health screening for the insurance but thats post onboarding and your job isnt dependent on it. Plus its you filling in a questionnaire not your records being accessed. 

There are some professions where health is critical but the biggest of those have special medical sign off so you have to show you have a relevant certificate in the last 12 months rather than open up your medical records... sort of thing commercial pilots have to do. Its more proactive than just checking what you've chosen to disclose to your doc

gm0

Outside the SC and DV world and beyond DBS for general employment.

Financial services can be picky - role dependent.

The accountancy audit service firms also outsource these checks and have them set to zealous.
I went through it as a contractor. And was amazed by the info dump demand.

But the 3rd party is following a policy and just needs *something* to tick the box.  Avoid lying. Given them something to tick a box and move on.  Redact account number info. I did that before scanning and submitting.

The reason I discovered later that audit firms do it so thoroughly (well set the policies for their outsourced admin) is to do with good old USA audit conflict of interest laws and the legal penalties for breaking them. 

They can't be working with the people they audit, the people they are trying to acquire for audit, or with companies the potential audit client conflict of interest parent owns - even using them as suppliers is viewed as problematic due to the cashflows. So they don't want anyone on board who is doing that now or recently.

This is in general a nightmare if you are outside the USA working with these firms - given merger and acquisition (of others) can kick your plans over at any moment.  It's partly why the EY advisory folk are so annoyed this week that their separation project has died and they remain shackled to an audit firm with a big US footprint.

So even as a contractor in another country you can get checked for several prior years to look for does business with X clashes and payments.  And this isn't really about you at all.  So no need to feel suspected.