Barclays fraud team blocked account

born_again

brianposter said:

TheBanker said: 

 No they haven't - they require two items from their lists but have received one item from the list and one item that is not on the list. These lists are designed to minimise the fraud risk and branch staff cannot simply over-ride them. 

 

Which, in this case, happens to be totally stupid.

The account holder has gone into the branch, presented their passport, and asked for the account to be unblocked. For some things it is rational to ask for more ID, but in this case it is senseless (unless the bank staff happen to believe something untoward is going on).

This must happen fairly frequently to people who are away from home and cannot present proof of address, or to people who simply have no proof of address, and the bank needs a procedure to get around their own regulations.

Why?
They turned up without the required ID.
So you think the bank staff should just say OK, move the money?

That is how banks ending up paying people back, as they claim they have been forced to move the money. Bank then get fined for failing to run the correct checks.

This is not a case of people away form home as they had POA letter, which unless registered with the bank means nothing. Also a strange thing to take.

As posted the fact that they were moving to a new bank would not be a issue, but when a amount is also going to POA, it sets alarm bells ringing to staff. Clearly that was triggered when doing transfer online. So branch staff would see this & be sure to ensure that the regulations were followed to the letter.

You have things like that drummed into you. 

brianposter

born_again said:

Why?
They turned up without the required ID.
They turned up following a phone conversation. Presumably they understood the documents that they had to be the most appropriate available.

Is there in reality any clear specification of what they were expected to produce ?

That is how banks ending up paying people back, as they claim they have been forced to move the money. Bank then get fined for failing to run the correct checks.

But asking for proof of address is not the correct check - it is completely irelevant to any likely problem. If pressure is suspected a longer interview is probably the only appropriate procedure.

This is not a case of people away form home as they had POA letter, which unless registered with the bank means nothing. Also a strange thing to take.

Proof of address is often problematic and not infrequently impossible.  Presumably the POA was to explain the situation rather than intended as ID.

As posted the fact that they were moving to a new bank would not be a issue, but when a amount is also going to POA, it sets alarm bells ringing to staff. Clearly that was triggered when doing transfer online.

One cannot complain about the suspect transaction being delayed but the branch staff need to be able to sort things out in a rational manner. Insisting that the customer return with some irrelevant document is not rational.

 So branch staff would see this & be sure to ensure that the regulations were followed to the letter.

When regulations are produced it is important that they are monitored and amended in response to the problems that will almost invariably arise. In this case what was probably required was a further conversation between the bank and the account holder, and the regulations need amending accordingly.

xxxxxxxxxx

TheBanker

brianposter said:

TheBanker said: 

 No they haven't - they require two items from their lists but have received one item from the list and one item that is not on the list. These lists are designed to minimise the fraud risk and branch staff cannot simply over-ride them. 

 

Which, in this case, happens to be totally stupid.

The account holder has gone into the branch, presented their passport, and asked for the account to be unblocked. For some things it is rational to ask for more ID, but in this case it is senseless (unless the bank staff happen to believe something untoward is going on).

This must happen fairly frequently to people who are away from home and cannot present proof of address, or to people who simply have no proof of address, and the bank needs a procedure to get around their own regulations.

As I said in the bit of my post that you chopped off, this might not actually be about ID. The ID might have been a convenient reason to ask the customer to come back tomorrow, while the staff took further advice. If the correct ID had been presented, they may well have had some kind of 'system problem' that prevented the transaction.

Unfortunatly, financial abuse of the elderly is a real thing. We don't know enough about the 'gift' to say whether the staff were right to be suspicious, but it would have been a red flag to me and I think justifies further investigations before proceeding. Ideally you would want to take the customer, alone, into a private room to try to confirm that nothing untoward was going on. Maybe they didn't have the staff available to do that, or the private room was being used by another customer, or they just needed time to review the account activity. Maybe they wanted to investigate with the bank that the account was being switched to.

brianposter

I do not disagree with that last post.

born_again

brianposter said:

born_again said:

Why?
They turned up without the required ID.
They turned up following a phone conversation. Presumably they understood the documents that they had to be the most appropriate available.

Is there in reality any clear specification of what they were expected to produce ?

That is how banks ending up paying people back, as they claim they have been forced to move the money. Bank then get fined for failing to run the correct checks.

But asking for proof of address is not the correct check - it is completely irelevant to any likely problem. If pressure is suspected a longer interview is probably the only appropriate procedure.

This is not a case of people away form home as they had POA letter, which unless registered with the bank means nothing. Also a strange thing to take.

Proof of address is often problematic and not infrequently impossible.  Presumably the POA was to explain the situation rather than intended as ID.

As posted the fact that they were moving to a new bank would not be a issue, but when a amount is also going to POA, it sets alarm bells ringing to staff. Clearly that was triggered when doing transfer online.

One cannot complain about the suspect transaction being delayed but the branch staff need to be able to sort things out in a rational manner. Insisting that the customer return with some irrelevant document is not rational.

 So branch staff would see this & be sure to ensure that the regulations were followed to the letter.

When regulations are produced it is important that they are monitored and amended in response to the problems that will almost invariably arise. In this case what was probably required was a further conversation between the bank and the account holder, and the regulations need amending accordingly.

xxxxxxxxxx

Clearly you have no idea the pressure staff are under to make sure that everything is correct. Procedure's are there to be followed. Failure can lead to loss of job.


FCA produce the regulations for banks to follow. Failure to follow leads to fines.

There is no need to change the regulations, as when contacted they will have been told what paperwork to bring in. We can only take it that Mother has her own property from the posts.
Son asking for it to be unblocked, while getting funds here. Simply reads as possible wrong doing. Which the bank will need to ensure is not the case 🤷‍♀️


This is the difference between looking at it from the inside & outside.