HSBC blocked account after mortgage deposit

GeoffTF

You can write to your MP saying that the AML regulations are too strict, and the fines on the banks for breaching them are too large. You can write to your MP saying that the time that banks are allowed to investigate a suspected case of money laundering is too long. I do not think you will get very far with either of those. You can write to the HSBC CEO saying that they should employ more AML staff to clear backlogs faster when they arise. Good luck with that one. HSBC may lose a few customers who get their accounts blocked, but they will also gain a few who leave other banks for the same reason. Be prepared.

Shakin_Steve

Nasqueron said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I expected the DDs to still work OK even though account access was blocked. It's crazy for them not to honour existing DDs as that's bound to cause problems.

They could be used to extract money to other accounts, though, as some savings accounts can pull DDs. You could also spend money with e.g., retailers when not entitled to i.e. because the money was stolen.

We can all think of ways people can misuse things but a DD for your car tax or for your household bills are unlikely to be the chosen method for fraud but are guaranteed to cause grief for the customer if they are not paid on time. This thread is another innocent person being assumed guilty by a bank and having their normal life "suspended" for an indefinite time. Why didn't the bank contact their customer and ask them some questions? They just assume everyone is guilty and then hide behind their procedures. The argument goes that they don't want to give a fraudster any more info but if you are a fraudster and the bank blocks the account you've got to be pretty stupid to not figure it out!

(BTW, until just now I didn't know you could DD your car tax).

MPs and society more generally want banks to combat fraud so complain to them, I guess. They have to move quickly when they see something suspicious and as DDs are a way to withdraw money they're refused. When you have millions of customers to monitor it'll take a while to get around to questioning those you've blocked. This is why it's a good idea to have multiple accounts, credit cards and money dotted around.

We shouldn't need to take such actions and you should not be so quick to defend the unreasonable actions of the (very rich) banks. Too many people on this forum are too quick to blindly defend the banks and are too quick to assume that everyone who complains on here is a scammer The banks are getting the balance wrong and it's purely to defend their profits rather than any more noble intention. Wait until it happens to you and see how you feel.

The banks obviously err on the side of caution, however, given our regulators have made it so banks have to foot the bill when people take part in the most obvious scams because they got greedy, it's not really surprising they want to be careful. If someone gets a phone call saying their bank has been hacked and they need to move the money to a completely different bank and after all the years of banks incessantly reminding them it's 100% a scam, and do it anyway; or indeed are daft enough to invest in cold calls about crypto scams and get greedy when they see fake gains etc etc, they should lose the money, not have the bank refund them. The actions of those people, and the unwillingness to make people see the hard truth and so force banks to refund them, is a major reason behind all this. Obviously banks have also been unethical and poor on things like AML but have equally been given massive fines for doing so, so are making it harder to do this as well.

That's fair enough, but a couple of high value payments into your account, demonstrably from your own mother, shouldn't cause an account to be frozen for more than a couple of hours. 

eskbanker

eDicky said:

eskbanker said:

Officer_Dibble said:

Voyager2002 said:

Sadly, HSBC complied with the law and no compensation is due.

This kind of thing can happen to anyone, at any time and with any bank. All you can do is maintain accounts with several different banks and spread your money between them, so that if one account is frozen you can still continue using funds in a different bank.

It's incredible that anyone's willing to stick up for HSBC on this. They're one of the worst for doing this kind of thing to ordinary people doing normal things (and also make it incredibly hard to run charity accounts as I've previously found myself) while allowing money laundering on a massive scale by drugs cartels. Most banks don't do this, because they're better at their job.

I'm not 'sticking up for HSBC' but would simply observe that it's hardly surprising that a business given massive fines for weak AML controls will then proceed to strengthen them!

Absolutely correct, it's not surprising at all. But what is surprising for me at least is that a huge bank such as HSBC, or we could say the UK banking system as a whole, appears unable or unwilling to develop and implement system algorithms and processes that can successfully identify instances of fraud and money laundering without the myriad of obvious false positives that are regularly impinging on the lives of innocent people simply carrying out their everyday banking needs plus occasional uncharacteristic actions such as in this case.

The human resources that could easily identify such false positives in a much more timely manner also appear to be lacking, for a bank with enough apparent financial strength that it should be able to remedy this, if they considered it to be of any priority.

I don't know it to be the case but would expect that there'd be some sort of regulatory monitoring of the level of false positives - there are evidently plenty of them, based on posts on here and elsewhere, but as a percentage of accounts/transactions it'll be minuscule.

Again I can't speak from any inside knowledge but believe there to be huge investment in such algorithms and systems, so the existence of some false positives doesn't actually indicate otherwise, as no such system will ever be perfect.

The FCA has been looking at account closures, suspensions and terminations, and the reasons for them, plus analysis of associated complaints, with findings published at:

https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/corporate/uk-payment-accounts-access-and-closures.pdf

Nasqueron

Shakin_Steve said:

Nasqueron said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I expected the DDs to still work OK even though account access was blocked. It's crazy for them not to honour existing DDs as that's bound to cause problems.

They could be used to extract money to other accounts, though, as some savings accounts can pull DDs. You could also spend money with e.g., retailers when not entitled to i.e. because the money was stolen.

We can all think of ways people can misuse things but a DD for your car tax or for your household bills are unlikely to be the chosen method for fraud but are guaranteed to cause grief for the customer if they are not paid on time. This thread is another innocent person being assumed guilty by a bank and having their normal life "suspended" for an indefinite time. Why didn't the bank contact their customer and ask them some questions? They just assume everyone is guilty and then hide behind their procedures. The argument goes that they don't want to give a fraudster any more info but if you are a fraudster and the bank blocks the account you've got to be pretty stupid to not figure it out!

(BTW, until just now I didn't know you could DD your car tax).

MPs and society more generally want banks to combat fraud so complain to them, I guess. They have to move quickly when they see something suspicious and as DDs are a way to withdraw money they're refused. When you have millions of customers to monitor it'll take a while to get around to questioning those you've blocked. This is why it's a good idea to have multiple accounts, credit cards and money dotted around.

We shouldn't need to take such actions and you should not be so quick to defend the unreasonable actions of the (very rich) banks. Too many people on this forum are too quick to blindly defend the banks and are too quick to assume that everyone who complains on here is a scammer The banks are getting the balance wrong and it's purely to defend their profits rather than any more noble intention. Wait until it happens to you and see how you feel.

The banks obviously err on the side of caution, however, given our regulators have made it so banks have to foot the bill when people take part in the most obvious scams because they got greedy, it's not really surprising they want to be careful. If someone gets a phone call saying their bank has been hacked and they need to move the money to a completely different bank and after all the years of banks incessantly reminding them it's 100% a scam, and do it anyway; or indeed are daft enough to invest in cold calls about crypto scams and get greedy when they see fake gains etc etc, they should lose the money, not have the bank refund them. The actions of those people, and the unwillingness to make people see the hard truth and so force banks to refund them, is a major reason behind all this. Obviously banks have also been unethical and poor on things like AML but have equally been given massive fines for doing so, so are making it harder to do this as well.

That's fair enough, but a couple of high value payments into your account, demonstrably from your own mother, shouldn't cause an account to be frozen for more than a couple of hours. 

It depends on the process, how quickly OP engaged with them, whether they told the bank in advance etc

penners324

I would contact your MP and still pursue HSBC for compensation.

This law is too flexible, it needs time limits put in it for banks to conduct these fraud searches

Shakin_Steve

Nasqueron said:

Shakin_Steve said:

Nasqueron said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I expected the DDs to still work OK even though account access was blocked. It's crazy for them not to honour existing DDs as that's bound to cause problems.

They could be used to extract money to other accounts, though, as some savings accounts can pull DDs. You could also spend money with e.g., retailers when not entitled to i.e. because the money was stolen.

We can all think of ways people can misuse things but a DD for your car tax or for your household bills are unlikely to be the chosen method for fraud but are guaranteed to cause grief for the customer if they are not paid on time. This thread is another innocent person being assumed guilty by a bank and having their normal life "suspended" for an indefinite time. Why didn't the bank contact their customer and ask them some questions? They just assume everyone is guilty and then hide behind their procedures. The argument goes that they don't want to give a fraudster any more info but if you are a fraudster and the bank blocks the account you've got to be pretty stupid to not figure it out!

(BTW, until just now I didn't know you could DD your car tax).

MPs and society more generally want banks to combat fraud so complain to them, I guess. They have to move quickly when they see something suspicious and as DDs are a way to withdraw money they're refused. When you have millions of customers to monitor it'll take a while to get around to questioning those you've blocked. This is why it's a good idea to have multiple accounts, credit cards and money dotted around.

We shouldn't need to take such actions and you should not be so quick to defend the unreasonable actions of the (very rich) banks. Too many people on this forum are too quick to blindly defend the banks and are too quick to assume that everyone who complains on here is a scammer The banks are getting the balance wrong and it's purely to defend their profits rather than any more noble intention. Wait until it happens to you and see how you feel.

The banks obviously err on the side of caution, however, given our regulators have made it so banks have to foot the bill when people take part in the most obvious scams because they got greedy, it's not really surprising they want to be careful. If someone gets a phone call saying their bank has been hacked and they need to move the money to a completely different bank and after all the years of banks incessantly reminding them it's 100% a scam, and do it anyway; or indeed are daft enough to invest in cold calls about crypto scams and get greedy when they see fake gains etc etc, they should lose the money, not have the bank refund them. The actions of those people, and the unwillingness to make people see the hard truth and so force banks to refund them, is a major reason behind all this. Obviously banks have also been unethical and poor on things like AML but have equally been given massive fines for doing so, so are making it harder to do this as well.

That's fair enough, but a couple of high value payments into your account, demonstrably from your own mother, shouldn't cause an account to be frozen for more than a couple of hours. 

It depends on the process, how quickly OP engaged with them, whether they told the bank in advance etc

16 days? Inefficient at best, negligent at worst.

eskbanker

There is often a popular assumption on these sort of threads that the banks are sitting around taking their time, in order to inconvenience their customers as much as possible, but in many cases the process entails a SAR referral to the NCA, the timescales of which were outlined in a similar previous thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79903409/#Comment_79903409

Kim_13

Far better to pay car tax by card - it can be paid on any card if one suddenly has a block on it - so you don’t then end up having to leave the car sitting in the drive knowing you will eventually have to pay the tax for those days and paying for alternative means of getting around in the meantime. Unless you pay in a single DD, it’s also costing you more.

You didn’t have insurance on DD as well did you? That could have led to a cancelled policy and those don’t fall off the record after 6 years unlike late/missed payments.

Can the OP get late payment markers removed when it is a fact that they were late? If not, you should be asking HSBC to pay for any increase in costs arising from them.

They’re required to give access in cash to any wages/benefits, which isn’t really cutting it in 2024. Providers charging for non-DD payments, e-billing meaning that the payment slips can’t be used to make cash payments. If you find someone willing to pay that cash into their account and pay the bills by FP, they might then find themselves blocked by their bank due to their bank not liking a large cash deposit. IMO, the system needs to be changed to require established bills to be paid up to the value of demonstrably legitimate funds, as well as the cash for food etc (which you might not even be able to get at all depending on who you bank with.) Banks should also be fined/required to pay compensation where they block too easily and don’t get straight forward cases cleared quickly. Unless they were investigating to make sure that the funds were legitimately held by OPs mother (can they do this?), what was taking so long? That OP couldn’t even get the bank to take any evidence from him in the beginning added to the delay.

As for HSBC saying that the account was showing as active on their system, misleading information is worse than none at all. And judging by their reaction when OP said he would check his app, the person who said that knew that what they had said was useless to him.

wattsjames1990

Thank you for all your replies. Interesting to see what everyone is saying. I fully understand the banks position on having to double check a transaction, however their customer service was atrocious and the fact I wasn't able to access my wages was another kick in the teeth. I had a response back from HSBC from a complaint that I raised online (waiting on a response from my written letter), the response to cut a long story short came out as: Sorry you had a problem and for the inconvenience caused. We reserve the right to block any account to carry out investigations without a timescale, this is our final response and we will not correspond with you any further on the matter. If you don't like it, take it up with the ombudsman'. Obviously their reply wasn't that blunt, but this was the impression I got from them. If the bank had held the two large transactions back whilst validating the source of them and allowing me to continue to use my account, I would have understood and been happy, but to put a blanket block on my whole account and cause all these problems, I can't really justify banking with them anymore. Thankfully I pay my car insurance monthly by card so that was ok as I could use another card, my car tax I have moved to our household bills account to try and break things up a bit. Il keep you updated with the response I get from them from my written letter!