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Santander ID and income check
Comments
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Is there any sensible person out there who thinks any of this mad bureaucracy will have any significant impact on organised crime?
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I don't think it's even intended to target sophisticated organised crime. The measures seem targeted at low and mid-level financial crime such as identity theft and money muling, which have been widely reported on by the media in recent years, together with low level fraud. These wouldn't make much impact in overall financial crime totals. High level crime involves tens of billions per year and has various channels not subject to strict regulation within which to shift money.
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The figures show that it has essentially no impact on financial crime, which continues to grow unencumbered year on year. I think the estimate of a preventative effect runs at between 0.3% and 0.8% annually, meaning well over 99% of criminal money is unaffected.
The banks implement this regime because they have to. If they don't, they will be fined, on account of the government(s) tasking them with the role of tackling crime as opposed to simply relaying information.
This is why it irks me when I hear people say, "Oh, but it's for our own good." In actual fact the benefits are solely for the banks (who avoid penalties) and the governments (who can shift the burden of blame onto the private sector as crime increases year on year), at the expense of the customer who experiences nothing other than varying degrees of disruption and detriment.
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The issue is that measures like this can only hope to drive payments from legitimate channels to underground channels. Politicians want to make the banks responsible for any part they have in legitimising illicit funds. Whereas criminals have enough motivation to avoid the banking system entirely if they think it would lead them to be caught. They'll resort to physically trafficking cash and valuables, or using cryptocurrencies instead.
But I think there are ways to make it easier on us without throwing the gates back open to them. What irks me is having to provide information and documents that have been provided to me by authorities and institutions. The data already exists on various systems that don't talk to each other. The only thing I should need to prove is that I am me, and that shouldn't involve any documents.
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The official numbers seem to suggest that about 0.25% of money laundering is stopped:
Fraud prevention has been much more successful:
the finance industry prevented £1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud in
the year ending December 2024, equivalent to 67p in every £1 of
attempted unauthorised fraudPreventing financial crime is clearly in all our interests. The situation with money laundering is analogous to that of shoplifting. Shoplifting is bad for the honest customers who eventually foot the bill. We are very bad at preventing shoplifting, but the solution for that is not to stop trying, which would make matters worse. Much the same applies to money laundering.
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Could you clarify your derivation of that 0.25% figure - there are many stats within that document and it isn't obvious (to this reader) which ones resolve to 0.25% of money laundering being stopped?
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Under the heading: Reduce money laundering and recover more criminal assets:
£100 billion laundered through and within the UK, or UK corporate structures, each year is a realistic possibility according to the National Assessment Centre (NAC), with £12 billion laundered using cash
£243.3 million of assets recovered in the financial year ending 2024, a 29% nominal term decrease on the previous year
Further down:
£240.1 million denied to suspected criminals due to DAML requests in the financial year ending 2024, a 12% decrease on the previous year; the 3-year rolling average is £272.7 million
That does not appear to be separate total. £240 million in £100 billion appears to have been blocked, i.e. about 0.24%. I have to say that conclusion is not at all clear. "What percentage of money laundering do you stop" is a perfectly reasonable question, but they do not appear to want to answer it directly. As I have said, the numbers would be far worse if no measures were taken.
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Recovering assets (after the event) is only part of the story though - this thread is more about the preventive controls like KYC and the extent to which they stop it from happening in the first place, which will be harder to quantify.
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That is true. How many potential criminals would remain honest as a result of a 1 in 400 chance of being caught? Even a 1 in 400 chance of being caught is a big deterrent if there is a fresh roll of the dice every time you commit a crime. I expect that some money launderers are relatively easy to catch and others much less so.
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Even a 1 in 400 chance of being caught is a big deterrent if there is a fresh roll of the dice every time you commit a crime
That sentence is presumably missing a 'not'?
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