Santander ID and income check

StewedApple

I'm broadly in agreement with Chief_Of_Staffy and Masonic's comments. I'm unpersuaded that ID checks are a productive and effective way of reducing crime, are burdensome to banks and to customers, and I suspect may lead inadvertently to ID Theft if organisations have less than stellar data security regimes in place.

I can well understand the benefits of reporting suspicious banking activity - it seems useful in intelligence-led detection of crime, but I suspect the ID measures may lead to low-level criminals cash-hoarding and avoiding the banking system - so reducing the effectiveness of intelligence-led work.

I also suspect that those who are organised and well-funded do not have these sorts of problems at all.

I'd be interested in exploring the costs of ID checks and their impact on crime if someone does have more information - I'm not averse to being persuaded these processes are effective but my experience at a personal level is they are a nuisance and badly thought through.

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096503#Comment_82096503

No, there is no missing "not", but perhaps I have not been clear. Commit the crime once, the probability of not being caught is 0.975. Commit the crime twice the probability of not being caught is 0.975^2 = 0.950625. (Assuming statistical independence.) Commit the crime 100 times the probability of not being caught is 0.975^100 = 0.079517. Commit the crime once and you are unlikely to be caught. Commit it 100 times and you are unlikely not to be caught. Commit it 1,000 times and you will almost certainly be caught.

Statistical independence may not hold true here. Some money launderers may have discovered ways of laundering money that are completely invisible to the authorities. Others are likely to be caught quickly.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096583#Comment_82096583

You have the decimal point in wrong place and used 0.975 (1 in 40) rather than 0.9975 (1 in 400), which obviously changes the model significantly!

However, I agree with your conclusion that it's unlikely to be valid to apply that sort of maths, and in any case recovering money isn't the same thing as catching and punishing an individual, so personally I don't think that 0.25% recovery is a meaningful deterrent…

masonic

The category used to reach the total of £100bn is probably a lot broader than the sum subject to DAML checks. But what the data doesn't tell us is how much of the £100bn would have gone through routes that are currently subject to DAML if those checks hadn't been brought in. Was £99.5bn just funnelled through routes where a DAML check wouldn't have been performed?

So the real question is: is it worth closing off an avenue for criminals if they have alternatives they can use? If all of the money used by firms to implement and run these checks were collected in some form of tax and given to the NCA, could it have been put to more productive use while tolerating criminals laundering money through bank accounts?

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096588#Comment_82096588

Sorry about that. 0.9975^1000 is 0.081828. If you have an average chance of being caught at each attempt, the odds eventually become unattractive. I would not have seen it as a career opportunity.

The suggestion here has been that since AML has met with little success we should not bother. The opposite view is that the controls badly need strengthening, because they are currently not good enough.

The topic here is ID checks. I see it as being in my interests that banks carry rigorous ID checks. Others either think it is too much trouble or resent the intrusion.

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096600#Comment_82096600

Surely this is just a 0.25% transaction tax paid by the criminal repeatedly pushing sums of money through the system, with some low-level stooge taking the eventual hit to their liberty.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096600#Comment_82096600

I agree - it's easy to be sceptical about the effect of (and motives for) some measures but doing nothing certainly isn't an option, so perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good and all that. To squeeze one more cliche in, there's no silver bullet here…

I was struck by OP's reference to "This was the most extensive ID verification and income check I have ever been asked to go through by a bank. I was able to complete it in 10 minutes"!

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096600#Comment_82096600

The topic here is ID checks. I see it as being in my interests that banks carry rigorous ID checks. Others either think it is too much trouble or resent the intrusion.

It is a question of balance really. I'd been toying with the idea of getting a new Santander credit card. masonic reporting that they'd got caught up in these new checks has put me off doing that. Having my Santander account blocked right now would be problematic and as I might need to go into an elusive branch (even more problematic) to sort it out then I'm not going to do something which risks causing hassle I don't want to deal with.

My current situation is not that usual, but across the population as a whole I'd be suprised if there wasn't a sizeable percentage who are putting off doing things to their (potential) financial benefit simply because the banking/finance system is getting increasingly difficult for the average law-abiding person to interact with.

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096601#Comment_82096601

Perhaps. Nonetheless the must be some link between the stooges and Mr Big. He has lots of links to stooges. any one of those could get him into trouble. Big time money launders are sometimes caught.

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82096613#Comment_82096613

I have Santander as my main account, but I am not worried. Santander seems to be be threatening to block accounts if their customer does not comply with the ID check, not blocking their account until they do. I have had my online access blocked until I rang them. That was not a serious problem. I rang them and they unblocked my online access.