4 ms·

Banks find AML "ineffective", propose access to social media

48 points by janandonly 2y ago

cs702 2y ago
When large corporations like banks say they want "access to social media," what they mean is they would love to get their hands on something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System ...but they want it to be controlled by large corporations instead of a government.
- rvnx 2y ago
  Like LinkedIn, when you create a new bank account and plan to deposit funds it's often checked.
- this_steve_j 2y ago
  Indeed I’d be surprised something like this doesn’t already exist. This article almost reads like a press release for the product that has been developed. What it needs is an air of legitimacy, hence the appeal to a public-private partnership.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  That link basically say a unified Social Credit system doesn't actually exist as imagined and the heavily covered Zhima Credit system basically just didn't even work. Though I'm sure there's no shortage of AI snake-oil vendors who promise banks the world over that they can do it but it "just needs more data to train on, 6 months tops, trust me bro".
- kalaksi 2y ago
  I immediately thought that they'd also start selling the newly acquired data in some form, since nowadays it seems that everybody wants to be in the spying business. My bank has recently started asking, from time to time, in the banking app for me to grant permission for collecting additional data. Thanks god for GDPR... IMO, banks should not overcomplicate things and should keep things simple for users.
danlitt 2y ago
Presumably if you do not have social media, you will be weeded out of the banking system like the terrorist you are?
- ren01r 2y ago
  It's already very difficult to avail banking if you don't carry a smartphone. I have a very inactive social media and I am working towards reducing my dependence on smartphones, at this point my most viable option is to move to another country that hasn't "modernised" their banking infra.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > It's already very difficult to avail banking if you don't carry a smartphone. I think it depends. I never use my smartphone for banking purposes and it doesn't make anything difficult for me at all. But I'm in the US and I know there are other nations where this isn't at all true.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- synicalx 2y ago
  As someone who hasn't had social media for several years, unless you count this site for some reason, this is mildly concerning. Do I just have to make a burner Facebook account so my bank will let me access my own money?
aussieguy1234 2y ago
For sure, this would lead to marginalised and vulnerable groups being denied access to the banking system.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
I'm sure this will be downvoted as a low quality HN comment, but honestly the only valid response here is: lol fuck off
- thaithrowawayy 2y ago
  Amen
snapcaster 2y ago
How is this different from China's social credit score?
- hnfong 2y ago
  It's not bad if we do it.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  China's social credit system requires actual recorded offenses to trigger penalties, in particular delinquency in paying fines or tax, not some bank's AI inhaling and rating your Facebook account history. The "Social" in the name is nothing to do with social media.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    True, theirs is a lot more fair
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Banks find AML "Ineffective" because the premise is erroneous. KYC is a sham because bankers don't actually know their customers and checking that you have a valid ID before you can open an account has no value. Criminals, or their straw men, have a valid ID. To detect crime you need detectives to investigate crimes. The transaction record by itself means nothing because the banks have no way to know what any of the transactions are actually paying for. But if you independently know that someone is buying cocaine or selling state secrets then you don't need their financial records to arrest them. Digging into anybody's Facebook isn't going to change that because posting about your criminal activities on a public forum is already how dumb criminals get arrested. This is nothing but a data grab by the banks.
- badcppdev 2y ago
  I agree with you. I think the only solution is for politicians to stop being soft on crime by funding police, prosecutors, courts, prisons, and rehabilitation services (rehab for both criminals and addicts). In addition the various tax authorities need to be empowered and funded to investigate tax fraud of all kinds and if caught then people need to be sent to prison rather than allowed to buy their way out of a sentence.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Most of that stuff isn't even related to this. Corporations and rich people don't avoid taxes by lying to banks, they avoid taxes by hiring tax lawyers or lobbying the government. The best way to put the drug cartels out of business is to let Pfizer and Merck beat them on quality and undercut them on price and then use the tax money to fund rehab and education programs. The actual crimes this is supposed to prevent aren't all that common, and to the extent that they aren't prosecuted it's largely because the perpetrators have political power -- or are themselves nation states -- not because we don't have enough prosecutors to do it. Especially if we would actually put the drug cartels out of business in the aforementioned way. We certainly don't need more people in prisons -- largest prison population in the world, how's it working?
  - zeroCalories 2y ago
raman162 2y ago
I think the adoption of 3d secure will be better in preventing fraud than giving banks more access to my personal information. I suspect access to this information won't be limited to fraud detection but loans, mortgages, etc. What happens to people like me who don't really use social media as well?
- freedomben 2y ago
  I'm in that same boat. My guess is it's going to end up being just like having no credit previously. The advice is to open a credit card and use it a little bit every month and pay it off entirely to build up your credit. They will recommend creating social media accounts and posting a little bit regularly so that your social media credit score can build. I'm afraid we are building ourselves a tech dystopia, not the bright future that most of us have thought.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > They will recommend creating social media accounts and posting a little bit regularly so that your social media credit score can build. Hey, now there's a great use for genAI. If we decline to the point where social media use is basically required, I'd totally just set up an LLM to post made-up stuff automatically for me so I won't have to bother doing it myself.
- ta988 2y ago
  They are not talking about that, they are trying to catch money laundering and traffics etc. And using that as an excuse to suck all of people data for marketing.
andrewstuart 2y ago
Inch by inch were just becoming inhuman nodes without any rights or privacy. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.
rahimnathwani 2y ago
The actual proposal is short (9 pages including glossary) and linked in the article: https://db.wolfsberg-group.org/assets/e3d83d2f-fad9-46d2-b5a9-3cf4e932f53f/Wolfsberg%20Group%20Statement%20on%20Effective%20Monitoring%20for%20Suspicious%20Activity.pdf https://db.wolfsberg-group.org/assets/e3d83d2f-fad9-46d2-b5a... I'd encourage you to draw your conclusions from the PDF rather than the journalist's interpretation.
- thriftwy 2y ago
  The text is opaque, but: > However, the Group believes strongly that the explicit focus on the provision of more highly useful information to relevant government agencies, and feedback from them on the information provided, will yield dividends in the form of more effective measures being taken against criminals and their illicit activity. So they want to superhighway all of your transactions to your government and then let it judge you without any due process. I don't see how that's any good.
criley2 2y ago
I have long since believed that maintaining a token "acceptable" social media presence is much more powerful than abstaining with regards to privacy/anonymity. The two suspicious things are overuse/misuse of social media, and no social media at all. It's like having a honeypot of easily found money in your home (barely hidden in a sock drawer, etc) so that a potential thief will be satisfied with the find and not dig deeper. Stories like this only solidify the power of maintaining a controlled social media presence.
- 39896880 2y ago
  The definition of “acceptable” will just keep shifting
  - criley2 2y ago
    Here's the thing, it's been shifting for all 10,000 years of civilization.
    - 39896880 2y ago
      I prefer not to participate in the acceleration.
fsagx 2y ago
AML : Anti Money Laundering
- 39896880 2y ago
  Thank you. I kept reading AI/ML and couldn’t figure out how more data would help…
idle_zealot 2y ago
It feels like we're gradually slipping into a dystopian nightmare world, predicted again and again by sci fi writers for decades, with no real strong opposition. There's the EFF, I guess? But advocacy groups don't seem particularly powerful or influential. I can't even hope for a "it'll get worse before it gets better" scenario. A world with normalized lack of privacy seems unlikely to suddenly care about it again. Perhaps we've been left behind by the cultural tide, and our values will die with us.
- dogleash 2y ago
  The relevancy of advocacy groups is at an all time low because of just how little the professionally informed care these days. Tech was a "community" when the grifters slid in wanted something from the rest of us, and YOLO fuck you I got mine backstabbery when anyone suggested maybe not selling out our privacy quite so hard. And it infects the rest of us. When our friends and colleagues have jobs swinging pickaxes at our societal expectations and standards of privacy, why do we pretend they're morally neutral in the whole thing?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lawn 2y ago
Yes AML/KYC is ineffective. But the solution isn't to increase the surveillance, that won't make it more effective. It'll just add noise that makes it even less effective. We should change path and move away from the dystopian nightmare, not towards it.
zarathustreal 2y ago
If you’re still using social media after e.g. the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Twitter Files, etc, you kinda deserve this. You’ve been warned multiple times.
zeroCalories 2y ago
Is this really worthwhile? We already see that there are huge bot networks on social media that effectively hide from automated scanning with fake activity, made even easier these days with genai. The only way to combat this is for social media to have KYC(which at this point, I support), but that just offloads the problem on to social media.
cjs_ac 2y ago
When I moved to the UK, I was advised to open a bank account with either Monzo or Starling, which are the two online-only startup banks in the UK. (They're actual banks, not resellers backed by other banks, or money transfer apps like CashApp.) This is because their identity checks involved scanning a single identity document and sending a video of myself saying that I wanted to open a bank account. All the traditional 'High Street' banks wanted all sorts of documentation - Council Tax bills, infamously - that I simply didn't have, because I'd just arrived in the country. I know why all this is necessary. London remains the financial capital of the world, and launders a lot of dirty money. Monzo in particular has strict limits on cash withdrawals and deposits, because their accounts are often used in the illicit drug trade. I have no objection to AML and KYC regulations, but it's absolutely crucial that legitimate people who don't fit the usual patterns - people like recent immigrants - have access to the banking system. The social media aspect of TFA is attention-grabbing, but I think it's a red herring. The more concerning aspect is the suggestion of AI. To what extent will those algorithms be used, and to what supervision will they be subject? In the 1980s, my father was an 'Automation Engineer' in a bank. He built an 'artificial intelligence system' for assessing home loan approvals. It was one of those fill-out-a-form-and-we'll-tell-you-how-much-you-can-borrow things that are all over the Internet now - entirely deterministic and transparent. That's how banking needs to work, at least for individuals. Determinism engenders trust. Modern AIs, on the other hand, are for algorithms that are too complex to be explained. If you've got those controlling people's access to finance - not just loans, but money they've deposited in their own bank account - we have a serious problem. 'Cash is King' is not a solution. Before my Dad worked at the bank, he worked in the payroll department at a soap company. He had to drive to the factory with the paypackets - one for each employee, containing their wages in cash - each week, and hand them out. That's utterly ridiculous.
- nindalf 2y ago
  > Monzo in particular has strict limits on cash withdrawals and deposits, because their accounts are often used in the illicit drug trade. ATMs often have fees that the bank will pay for. For example, most ATMs have an upsell at the end to "check your balance" that your bank will pay for. On the other hand, card payments generate a small amount of revenue for the bank. Most payments in the UK are card payments or bank transfers. I'll have to say you're mistaken. Monzo doesn't have limits on cash withdrawal as an AML control.
throwaway61803 2y ago
I worked for Deutsche Bank for 2 years. Before throwing stones, I knew it was a mistake going in, but I needed a job desperately and I was thinking I will sabotage them, from the inside. Imagine my surprise when I realised I don't really need to sabotage them - they're doing it already on their own. Every 6 months we got mandatory AML trainings - watching a couple of videos and answering some fairly basic questions. Every time, the same videos and the same questions - I had colleagues who simply wrote down the correct answers and completed this in 10 minutes. I had colleagues who were actively helping (low level) drug dealers - taking their cash, depositing it their own private accounts and then transferring the funds to some other 3rd party (fairly low amounts, under 10k). BaFin (the German banking supervisory authority) is useless (see Wirecard, Solaris, N26) - I personally made reports about another financial institution - got a boilerplate reply after a year that they'll look into it and nothing since then (this was more than a year ago). I left the banking and fintech world and will never go back (unless I have a real possibility to sabotage them from the inside). The cherry on top: I sold my car to a private individual and they paid me cash. We, of course, did a (ADAC) contract and the next day went to my bank (Postbank, part of DB) to deposit the funds (around 15k). The clerk was on the verge of calling police because I had so much money on me. Even showing her the contract, explaining that I work in DB and I know what the AML regulations are etc made no difference. In the end I had to deposit 9.900 in my account and the rest in my wife's account. (you can't retrieve more than 10k, but there is no restriction on deposits, you just need to show ID)
nindalf 2y ago
This is clickbait. When you read the actual statement it's reporting on, and ctrl+f "social", you find that it is used exactly once. > Input data for MSA platforms should incorporate not only transactional data, customer static data and internal reference lists, but also other dynamic behavioural customer information where proportionate to the risk (e.g. device ID, IP addresses). Using an RBA, input data may also include data from reputable external, publicly available sources, including information on company structures, Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBO), and watch lists, as well as complementary sources such as market data and verified customer social media accounts. Finally, FIs should establish robust data governance and quality control frameworks. In other words, do a thorough investigation based on all of these inputs. If you're looking at potential money laundering through a business, go to Companies House and learn as much as you can about the business to determine how legit it is. When you're looking a potentially fraudulent customer, look at their digital footprint online, including social media to determine how legit they are. This is standard practice in banks today. What the statement suggests is that in addition to monitoring individual transactions, banks should periodically monitor customers as well. The statement doesn't call for "access", nor does it even use the word "access" in the main text. It's simply clickbait, which people reading the headline + comments alone have fallen for.
cromulent 2y ago
Every time the banks ask me for KYC/AML stuff, I think about the Danske Bank Estonia scandal [1]. In 8 years, €800 billion of suspicious transactions flowed through Danske Bank Estonia, which is over 5 x Estonian GDP during that period. Five times! If this does not set off alarm bells, then checking my little transactions is not going to solve anything. Security theatre. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_s...
chrismcb 2y ago
KYC and AML is dumb and needs to go away. Of course it won't as it gives the government too much power

48 points by janandonly 2y ago

When large corporations like banks say they want "access to social media," what they mean is they would love to get their hands on something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System ...but they want it to be controlled by large corporations instead of a government.

rvnx 2y ago
Like LinkedIn, when you create a new bank account and plan to deposit funds it's often checked.
this_steve_j 2y ago
Indeed I’d be surprised something like this doesn’t already exist. This article almost reads like a press release for the product that has been developed. What it needs is an air of legitimacy, hence the appeal to a public-private partnership.
grues-dinner 2y ago
That link basically say a unified Social Credit system doesn't actually exist as imagined and the heavily covered Zhima Credit system basically just didn't even work. Though I'm sure there's no shortage of AI snake-oil vendors who promise banks the world over that they can do it but it "just needs more data to train on, 6 months tops, trust me bro".
kalaksi 2y ago
I immediately thought that they'd also start selling the newly acquired data in some form, since nowadays it seems that everybody wants to be in the spying business. My bank has recently started asking, from time to time, in the banking app for me to grant permission for collecting additional data. Thanks god for GDPR... IMO, banks should not overcomplicate things and should keep things simple for users.

danlitt 2y ago

Presumably if you do not have social media, you will be weeded out of the banking system like the terrorist you are?

ren01r 2y ago
It's already very difficult to avail banking if you don't carry a smartphone. I have a very inactive social media and I am working towards reducing my dependence on smartphones, at this point my most viable option is to move to another country that hasn't "modernised" their banking infra.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > It's already very difficult to avail banking if you don't carry a smartphone. I think it depends. I never use my smartphone for banking purposes and it doesn't make anything difficult for me at all. But I'm in the US and I know there are other nations where this isn't at all true.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
synicalx 2y ago
As someone who hasn't had social media for several years, unless you count this site for some reason, this is mildly concerning. Do I just have to make a burner Facebook account so my bank will let me access my own money?

aussieguy1234 2y ago

For sure, this would lead to marginalised and vulnerable groups being denied access to the banking system.

beeboobaa3 2y ago

I'm sure this will be downvoted as a low quality HN comment, but honestly the only valid response here is: lol fuck off

thaithrowawayy 2y ago
Amen

snapcaster 2y ago

How is this different from China's social credit score?

hnfong 2y ago
It's not bad if we do it.
grues-dinner 2y ago
China's social credit system requires actual recorded offenses to trigger penalties, in particular delinquency in paying fines or tax, not some bank's AI inhaling and rating your Facebook account history. The "Social" in the name is nothing to do with social media.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  True, theirs is a lot more fair

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

Banks find AML "Ineffective" because the premise is erroneous. KYC is a sham because bankers don't actually know their customers and checking that you have a valid ID before you can open an account has no value. Criminals, or their straw men, have a valid ID. To detect crime you need detectives to investigate crimes. The transaction record by itself means nothing because the banks have no way to know what any of the transactions are actually paying for. But if you independently know that someone is buying cocaine or selling state secrets then you don't need their financial records to arrest them. Digging into anybody's Facebook isn't going to change that because posting about your criminal activities on a public forum is already how dumb criminals get arrested. This is nothing but a data grab by the banks.

badcppdev 2y ago
I agree with you. I think the only solution is for politicians to stop being soft on crime by funding police, prosecutors, courts, prisons, and rehabilitation services (rehab for both criminals and addicts). In addition the various tax authorities need to be empowered and funded to investigate tax fraud of all kinds and if caught then people need to be sent to prison rather than allowed to buy their way out of a sentence.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Most of that stuff isn't even related to this. Corporations and rich people don't avoid taxes by lying to banks, they avoid taxes by hiring tax lawyers or lobbying the government. The best way to put the drug cartels out of business is to let Pfizer and Merck beat them on quality and undercut them on price and then use the tax money to fund rehab and education programs. The actual crimes this is supposed to prevent aren't all that common, and to the extent that they aren't prosecuted it's largely because the perpetrators have political power -- or are themselves nation states -- not because we don't have enough prosecutors to do it. Especially if we would actually put the drug cartels out of business in the aforementioned way. We certainly don't need more people in prisons -- largest prison population in the world, how's it working?
- zeroCalories 2y ago

raman162 2y ago

I think the adoption of 3d secure will be better in preventing fraud than giving banks more access to my personal information. I suspect access to this information won't be limited to fraud detection but loans, mortgages, etc. What happens to people like me who don't really use social media as well?

freedomben 2y ago
I'm in that same boat. My guess is it's going to end up being just like having no credit previously. The advice is to open a credit card and use it a little bit every month and pay it off entirely to build up your credit. They will recommend creating social media accounts and posting a little bit regularly so that your social media credit score can build. I'm afraid we are building ourselves a tech dystopia, not the bright future that most of us have thought.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > They will recommend creating social media accounts and posting a little bit regularly so that your social media credit score can build. Hey, now there's a great use for genAI. If we decline to the point where social media use is basically required, I'd totally just set up an LLM to post made-up stuff automatically for me so I won't have to bother doing it myself.
ta988 2y ago
They are not talking about that, they are trying to catch money laundering and traffics etc. And using that as an excuse to suck all of people data for marketing.

andrewstuart 2y ago

Inch by inch were just becoming inhuman nodes without any rights or privacy. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.

rahimnathwani 2y ago

The actual proposal is short (9 pages including glossary) and linked in the article: https://db.wolfsberg-group.org/assets/e3d83d2f-fad9-46d2-b5a9-3cf4e932f53f/Wolfsberg%20Group%20Statement%20on%20Effective%20Monitoring%20for%20Suspicious%20Activity.pdf https://db.wolfsberg-group.org/assets/e3d83d2f-fad9-46d2-b5a... I'd encourage you to draw your conclusions from the PDF rather than the journalist's interpretation.

thriftwy 2y ago
The text is opaque, but: > However, the Group believes strongly that the explicit focus on the provision of more highly useful information to relevant government agencies, and feedback from them on the information provided, will yield dividends in the form of more effective measures being taken against criminals and their illicit activity. So they want to superhighway all of your transactions to your government and then let it judge you without any due process. I don't see how that's any good.

criley2 2y ago

I have long since believed that maintaining a token "acceptable" social media presence is much more powerful than abstaining with regards to privacy/anonymity. The two suspicious things are overuse/misuse of social media, and no social media at all. It's like having a honeypot of easily found money in your home (barely hidden in a sock drawer, etc) so that a potential thief will be satisfied with the find and not dig deeper. Stories like this only solidify the power of maintaining a controlled social media presence.

39896880 2y ago
The definition of “acceptable” will just keep shifting
- criley2 2y ago
  Here's the thing, it's been shifting for all 10,000 years of civilization.
  - 39896880 2y ago
    I prefer not to participate in the acceleration.

fsagx 2y ago

AML : Anti Money Laundering

39896880 2y ago
Thank you. I kept reading AI/ML and couldn’t figure out how more data would help…

idle_zealot 2y ago

It feels like we're gradually slipping into a dystopian nightmare world, predicted again and again by sci fi writers for decades, with no real strong opposition. There's the EFF, I guess? But advocacy groups don't seem particularly powerful or influential. I can't even hope for a "it'll get worse before it gets better" scenario. A world with normalized lack of privacy seems unlikely to suddenly care about it again. Perhaps we've been left behind by the cultural tide, and our values will die with us.

dogleash 2y ago
The relevancy of advocacy groups is at an all time low because of just how little the professionally informed care these days. Tech was a "community" when the grifters slid in wanted something from the rest of us, and YOLO fuck you I got mine backstabbery when anyone suggested maybe not selling out our privacy quite so hard. And it infects the rest of us. When our friends and colleagues have jobs swinging pickaxes at our societal expectations and standards of privacy, why do we pretend they're morally neutral in the whole thing?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lawn 2y ago

Yes AML/KYC is ineffective. But the solution isn't to increase the surveillance, that won't make it more effective. It'll just add noise that makes it even less effective. We should change path and move away from the dystopian nightmare, not towards it.

zarathustreal 2y ago

If you’re still using social media after e.g. the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Twitter Files, etc, you kinda deserve this. You’ve been warned multiple times.

zeroCalories 2y ago

Is this really worthwhile? We already see that there are huge bot networks on social media that effectively hide from automated scanning with fake activity, made even easier these days with genai. The only way to combat this is for social media to have KYC(which at this point, I support), but that just offloads the problem on to social media.

cjs_ac 2y ago

When I moved to the UK, I was advised to open a bank account with either Monzo or Starling, which are the two online-only startup banks in the UK. (They're actual banks, not resellers backed by other banks, or money transfer apps like CashApp.) This is because their identity checks involved scanning a single identity document and sending a video of myself saying that I wanted to open a bank account. All the traditional 'High Street' banks wanted all sorts of documentation - Council Tax bills, infamously - that I simply didn't have, because I'd just arrived in the country. I know why all this is necessary. London remains the financial capital of the world, and launders a lot of dirty money. Monzo in particular has strict limits on cash withdrawals and deposits, because their accounts are often used in the illicit drug trade. I have no objection to AML and KYC regulations, but it's absolutely crucial that legitimate people who don't fit the usual patterns - people like recent immigrants - have access to the banking system. The social media aspect of TFA is attention-grabbing, but I think it's a red herring. The more concerning aspect is the suggestion of AI. To what extent will those algorithms be used, and to what supervision will they be subject? In the 1980s, my father was an 'Automation Engineer' in a bank. He built an 'artificial intelligence system' for assessing home loan approvals. It was one of those fill-out-a-form-and-we'll-tell-you-how-much-you-can-borrow things that are all over the Internet now - entirely deterministic and transparent. That's how banking needs to work, at least for individuals. Determinism engenders trust. Modern AIs, on the other hand, are for algorithms that are too complex to be explained. If you've got those controlling people's access to finance - not just loans, but money they've deposited in their own bank account - we have a serious problem. 'Cash is King' is not a solution. Before my Dad worked at the bank, he worked in the payroll department at a soap company. He had to drive to the factory with the paypackets - one for each employee, containing their wages in cash - each week, and hand them out. That's utterly ridiculous.

nindalf 2y ago
> Monzo in particular has strict limits on cash withdrawals and deposits, because their accounts are often used in the illicit drug trade. ATMs often have fees that the bank will pay for. For example, most ATMs have an upsell at the end to "check your balance" that your bank will pay for. On the other hand, card payments generate a small amount of revenue for the bank. Most payments in the UK are card payments or bank transfers. I'll have to say you're mistaken. Monzo doesn't have limits on cash withdrawal as an AML control.

throwaway61803 2y ago

I worked for Deutsche Bank for 2 years. Before throwing stones, I knew it was a mistake going in, but I needed a job desperately and I was thinking I will sabotage them, from the inside. Imagine my surprise when I realised I don't really need to sabotage them - they're doing it already on their own. Every 6 months we got mandatory AML trainings - watching a couple of videos and answering some fairly basic questions. Every time, the same videos and the same questions - I had colleagues who simply wrote down the correct answers and completed this in 10 minutes. I had colleagues who were actively helping (low level) drug dealers - taking their cash, depositing it their own private accounts and then transferring the funds to some other 3rd party (fairly low amounts, under 10k). BaFin (the German banking supervisory authority) is useless (see Wirecard, Solaris, N26) - I personally made reports about another financial institution - got a boilerplate reply after a year that they'll look into it and nothing since then (this was more than a year ago). I left the banking and fintech world and will never go back (unless I have a real possibility to sabotage them from the inside). The cherry on top: I sold my car to a private individual and they paid me cash. We, of course, did a (ADAC) contract and the next day went to my bank (Postbank, part of DB) to deposit the funds (around 15k). The clerk was on the verge of calling police because I had so much money on me. Even showing her the contract, explaining that I work in DB and I know what the AML regulations are etc made no difference. In the end I had to deposit 9.900 in my account and the rest in my wife's account. (you can't retrieve more than 10k, but there is no restriction on deposits, you just need to show ID)

nindalf 2y ago

This is clickbait. When you read the actual statement it's reporting on, and ctrl+f "social", you find that it is used exactly once. > Input data for MSA platforms should incorporate not only transactional data, customer static data and internal reference lists, but also other dynamic behavioural customer information where proportionate to the risk (e.g. device ID, IP addresses). Using an RBA, input data may also include data from reputable external, publicly available sources, including information on company structures, Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBO), and watch lists, as well as complementary sources such as market data and verified customer social media accounts. Finally, FIs should establish robust data governance and quality control frameworks. In other words, do a thorough investigation based on all of these inputs. If you're looking at potential money laundering through a business, go to Companies House and learn as much as you can about the business to determine how legit it is. When you're looking a potentially fraudulent customer, look at their digital footprint online, including social media to determine how legit they are. This is standard practice in banks today. What the statement suggests is that in addition to monitoring individual transactions, banks should periodically monitor customers as well. The statement doesn't call for "access", nor does it even use the word "access" in the main text. It's simply clickbait, which people reading the headline + comments alone have fallen for.

cromulent 2y ago

Every time the banks ask me for KYC/AML stuff, I think about the Danske Bank Estonia scandal [1]. In 8 years, €800 billion of suspicious transactions flowed through Danske Bank Estonia, which is over 5 x Estonian GDP during that period. Five times! If this does not set off alarm bells, then checking my little transactions is not going to solve anything. Security theatre. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_s...

chrismcb 2y ago

KYC and AML is dumb and needs to go away. Of course it won't as it gives the government too much power