Barratou Barry, an RBC bank client of 15 years, says on Aug. 18, she went to her regular branch location on Bank Street to make a cash deposit in her account and to pick up her new credit card.
“The first transaction went well. I put money into my account, I gave them my debit card; everything was smooth. To pick up my credit card I needed identification,” she says. “I did not have my driver’s license handy with me at that time. I had my health card.”
“Just a letter difference” in an official ID is reason enough, I think, to those suspicions. It’s not the job of the bank to figure out whether an ID is valid, it is however, their job to report any suspicious transactions under AML laws and to prevent fraudsters with fake IDs from accessing their bona fide customers’ accounts.
Calling the police is an entirely appropriate response in this case. Aside from taking a while to show up, it’s also not clear the police did anything wrong with the customer.
I’m sure they always call the police…
We’re dealing with a sample size of one.
Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. We have a sample size of one and you’re now
I’m sorry dog when the problem is a typo on an otherwise fine passport calling the cops isn’t the first course of action. Asking “are you aware your name is misspelled on your passport” seems like a pretty obvious step one. Especially when she still had her old passport with her.
They’re a bank dealing with money. Sure put money into an account. Who cares about money going in. But pulling it out you need to identify and if it doesn’t match the teller has to confirm identity legally and professionally. Nothing in this story indicates its about race. To me it sounds more racist to throw out accusations of racism at random people doing their job because you fucked up and didn’t validate your own ID. When your issued a passport they get you to check the information is correct for this reason. The bank has strict regulatory policies and internal rules all tellers are required to follow.
I wasn’t there so I can’t say it’s racially motivated for sure but what I can say is that passports have much more reliable ways of telling if they’re forged than a typo.
The problem is “otherwise fine” is not a determination bank staff can make. The passport has one glaring issue, but the branch staff aren’t document experts and can’t run identification confirmation checks on government databases. The police can.
I would have been severely reprimanded or even fired for calling the police on an error like this. All banks have an AML and KYC reporting guidelines and internal controls. None of them involve the branch employee calling police for document misspellings. It’s not the standard action and should never have occured.
Aha, so would you have (a) tipped her off to the issue in potential contravention of AML regs? Or (b) continued to serve her, despite you not being sure she is who she says she is, in potential violation of KYC/privacy?
Well thats’ ridiculous. In what world are those the only two options? Number one, two forms of ID are standard banking practices. Obviously if you don’t feel comfortable accepting one you are taught to ask for another.
You are also given free discresion to deny processing transactions (so long as you submitted some kind of AML/ security report) to our compliance department. You dont discuss these with clients, you are taught to make up an excuse or be vague and deny the processing. Common practice for bad checks. These cases are always handled by a dedicated AML/ compliance office of the institution.
Unless you are actively being robbed branch employees are not suppose to be calling the police. This is standard across all large banks.
SOURCE: 15 years across a variety of banks in branch/trust/ and estate compliance.
