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After Public Outcry From Customers, Britain's Biggest Bank HSBC Heads Off Complaints Over Small Business Account Closures (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-things dept.

Julia Kollewe writing for The Guardian: HSBC has rushed to head off complaints from small businesses that found the bank had frozen or closed down their accounts as part of a crackdown on financial crime. Hundreds of small firms are thought to be affected, whose businesses range from an avocado importer to marketing and design companies. Britain's biggest bank, which has faced accusations of reacting slowly to the debacle, said that after becoming aware of problems in the past week, it was putting extra staff on its helpline and speeding up the process for dealing with complaints. It said staff were reducing the amount of time to unfreeze an account once a review had been completed. Earlier on Monday, Richard Davey, an HTML5 game developer and creator of Phaser, shared his ordeal dealing with HSBC, which had suspended transactions from his accounts without much explanation. It was only after thousands of users brought it to the company's attention on social media that the company fixed Davey's account, he said.

3 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Lesson Learned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't bank with HSBC unless you're a drug kingpin needing to launder money.

  2. US, too by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The US does this, too. There have been dozens of stories of small business owners having their accounts frozen for "structuring," or making multiple payments or withdraws under $5,000. Transactions over $5000 are reported to the government, so it supposedly is "shady" if you are doing multiple transactions below that limit. Problem is, some people make these types of transactions during regular business. Once frozen, it's up to the business owner to prove to the government that their transactions were legitimate, which can take months, during which time they can't access the money in their bank, which usually drives them out of business.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re:US, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The moronic part is that the $10k figure was set way back in a time when $10k was worth something. As time has passed, $10k has become less and less valuable, so larger swaths of people and businesses have been caught up by the RICO fishing net. Make no mistake -- it's a giant, ongoing, fishing expedition.