Santander blocked my account without any reason

Malthusian

a7ash said:

Yes I have lodged a complaint with Santander. They have repeated the same thing in the complaint response letter, and also asked me to approach the Financial Ombudsman within 6 months if needed. 

As this sounds like their "final response", you should go to the Financial Ombudsman immediately. By all means try to escalate to the CEO, but do not wait for a response before you go to the FOS. You've already gone past that stage. It is likely to take the Ombudsman months to pick up the case. 
(They can in theory push cases up the queue if the complainant is in immediate hardship, but I wouldn't rely on them doing so.)

a7ash said:

Yes all my other bank accounts are working fine. However most of my funds were with Santander. In hindsight, it was a mistake to keep most of your funds with one bank.

Unless you had more than £85k with the Santander banking licence (£170k for joint accounts), you've not done anything unwise. Make sure you include any financial losses (e.g. interest from having to rely on borrowing) in your complaint to the Ombudsman.

Johnjdc

I have to say if this was me and I had genuinely done nothing wrong (the last person I came across claiming their account had been closed "for no reason" had been allowing a crypto company to use it as a shell account to avoid Know Your Customer rules...) I'd have dressed up as a homeless beggar by now with a sign saying "homeless and hungry [because Santander have my money] please help" and be sitting in their reception with it, and possibly a manky dog on a string.

xylophone

Glad you've got a backup account - sounds like you have no C/A with Santander, but in case I'm mistaken and you do -

He might have a current account with Santander

I only opened an ISA with Santander itself, and transferred 20K to it, but it was from my Santander account and the ISA was also from Santander.

If the OP had had a  non ISA savings account with Santander and simply transferred money from that account to a Santander ISA, denying access to the ISA would seem very odd indeed.

If he had always kept a  hefty balance in a Santander current account and decided to transfer part of that balance to an ISA, freezing the account(s) would seem very odd indeed.

There must be some sort of question mark over the source of the funds?

a7ash

Malthusian said:
As this sounds like their "final response", you should go to the Financial Ombudsman immediately. By all means try to escalate to the CEO, but do not wait for a response before you go to the FOS. You've already gone past that stage. It is likely to take the Ombudsman months to pick up the case. 

(They can in theory push cases up the queue if the complainant is in immediate hardship, but I wouldn't rely on them doing so.)

Thanks I will. 



Unless you had more than £85k with the Santander banking licence (£170k for joint accounts), you've not done anything unwise. Make sure you include any financial losses (e.g. interest from having to rely on borrowing) in your complaint to the Ombudsman.

i had a shade over 85K. Why would this cause a problem ? These were my genuine savings.

Also does anyone know a good lawyer ot firm to deal with things like these ?

dunstonh

There must be some sort of question mark over the source of the funds?

It can be a question over source of funds.  It could also be multiple crypto or overseas transactions (often from multiple sources), suspected fraud or just old fashioned crossfiring.

dealyboy

a7ash said:

Malthusian said:
As this sounds like their "final response", you should go to the Financial Ombudsman immediately. By all means try to escalate to the CEO, but do not wait for a response before you go to the FOS. You've already gone past that stage. It is likely to take the Ombudsman months to pick up the case. 

(They can in theory push cases up the queue if the complainant is in immediate hardship, but I wouldn't rely on them doing so.)

Thanks I will. 



Unless you had more than £85k with the Santander banking licence (£170k for joint accounts), you've not done anything unwise. Make sure you include any financial losses (e.g. interest from having to rely on borrowing) in your complaint to the Ombudsman.

i had a shade over 85K. Why would this cause a problem ? These were my genuine savings.

Also does anyone know a good lawyer ot firm to deal with things like these ?

Hi @a7ash ... sorry to read this, it must be very distressing.

There is a lot of good advice already, but I would simply add that the money is safe and you will gain access to it again as soon as Santander's investigation is complete. However in the eventuality that Santander comes to a conclusion of criminality involved they will need to prove it.

You do have contingencies in place and ways to further a complaint, as has been advised, so progress comes down to process and legality. It might help us and you if you can tell us about your Santander accounts and how you fund them, as people are failing to understand the trigger for this action.

Best wishes.

kaMelo

Whilst I can't offer any help above what's been said already it is important to point out that even when an account has been blocked you can always withdraw any salary or benefits that have been paid into it, no one expects you to live on fresh air.

The downside is that it usually requires a branch visit with ID and proof of income/benefits to do so.

aaj123

Momanns said:

Vortigern said:

A possible reason for their action is suspicion about where that 20K came from before it reached Santander. Have they asked you about this?

They wouldn't articulate this to OP. They are bound by "tipping off" offences and their own procedures.

Sg28 said:

I would be interested to know what would actually cause such a block. Surely even if you had paid in a huge unkown sum of money they would just request a source of funds under AML regulations allowing you to explain it. 

Just randomly shutting the account with no info seems quite drastic and scary! 

I would still very much doubt they are randomly shutting the account. There will be a reason we are not aware of.

Aware of this but its a silly rule since their staying quiet behavior already tips off the customer. 

kaMelo

aaj123 said:

Momanns said:

Vortigern said:

A possible reason for their action is suspicion about where that 20K came from before it reached Santander. Have they asked you about this?

They wouldn't articulate this to OP. They are bound by "tipping off" offences and their own procedures.

Sg28 said:

I would be interested to know what would actually cause such a block. Surely even if you had paid in a huge unkown sum of money they would just request a source of funds under AML regulations allowing you to explain it. 

Just randomly shutting the account with no info seems quite drastic and scary! 

I would still very much doubt they are randomly shutting the account. There will be a reason we are not aware of.

Aware of this but its a silly rule since their staying quiet behavior already tips off the customer. 

Not really,  a customer of dubious nature has dodgy dealings and the bank freezes their account but tells them nothing about why.. The dubious customer knows exactly what they've been up to, they now know know the bank knows something but have no idea how much they know or how long they've been monitoring their accounts.

phillw

kaMelo said:
The dubious customer knows exactly what they've been up to, they now know know the bank knows something but have no idea how much they know or how long they've been monitoring their accounts.

Or they google it, find the thread here and then can't tell whether they've just had their account locked for some random reason or not.

Either way, they are watching now and you need to behave like a normal person would do.