Impacts of savings with a US Bank

Lioness2026

I'm looking to set up a 1yr fixed term savings account with Marcus Bank (part of Goldman Sachs in the US) . Their terms and conditions state that they can block withdrawals if they need to "comply with sanctions regulations, and not doing so could mean they face action by a regulator/government/law enforcement body". Does anyone know what this might mean in terms of current situation with the US administration?

MyRealNameToo

Lioness2026 said:

I'm looking to set up a 1yr fixed term savings account with Marcus Bank (part of Goldman Sachs in the US) . Their terms and conditions state that they can block withdrawals if they need to "comply with sanctions regulations, and not doing so could mean they face action by a regulator/government/law enforcement body". Does anyone know what this might mean in terms of current situation with the US administration?

Little, unless you are planning to move to Cuba or North Korea 

All banks vet transactions against sanctions lists, what can vary is which sanctions lists they care about. What may vary between banks is which sanctions lists they are concerned about, in principle it will be each country that they operate in but some will only screen in country customers whereas others will be applied globally. 

In my world we scan all policyholders and claimants against the UK, EU, US and the UN. In principle our software could also scan for sanctioned people/companies who have been sanctioned by Russia but we choose not to as we dont do business there and arent overly interested in who they dislike. 

At this point its fairly unlikely that there will be sanctions against people/companies in relation to Greenland etc, though those connected to certain latin American countries, Caribbean islands and Middle East states maybe a bit more worried. 

Its likely that some UK banks will be following the US sanctions anyway so not a material shift in risk

Woodstok2000

If you're talking about Marcus UK, they are a UK registered company and those terms and conditions relate to English law so unless you are channelling funds from Russia or something like that your risk is not materially different than with any other bank.