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.”
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.
So someone gives you ID with bad info and you just keep accepting different ID until you get one thats ok from them, and don’t escalate or file a unusual transaction report? Hope you don’t still work for a FI
