Tried Opening a Bank Account Recently?

I guess that a lot of older people are suffering from the fall in interest rates on bank savings accounts – sensible advice is always to shop around for the best rates, especially when some accounts are offering virtually nil interest. If you can tie money up over a number of years, then slightly better rates are on offer, but for instant access, things are grim.

The concerns about money laundering have made the whole process of shopping around vastly more difficult. I have tried to open accounts with the best rate suppliers twice, and in both cases given up the attempt as, by the time they actually managed to get the account open, they were no longer offering the best rate.

I have made a new attempt to open an account with Alliance & Leicester, who are consistently pretty high on the rates chart for instant access savings. My error, about which I can do little now, is that my wife is Dutch. She has lived in the UK for around 20 years, has had a bank account with another bank in the same group as A & L for 9 years or so, runs a business here, and is even on the parish council of the village where we have lived for 10 years. However, the moment a bank hears that an alien is trying to open an account, shutters go down everywhere.

I filled in the required information on the internet. A letter then came through asking for further confirmation of identity and address for her, with a need to have this countersigned by someone with ‘Status’ – a very odd mix of professions qualifies for this. We pestered our solicitor neighbour for this service. Off this went, and then another letter came through saying that even more information was need – in fact two letters with utterly contradictory requirements came though.

Sensible thinking – we went to a branch of A & L, where they apologised but said it was nothing to do with them, as it was an online account, and they couldn’t understand the two letters either. However, they agreed to copy the pile of documents we carried, and to send them off by internal post.

Now, five weeks after the initial attempt to open the account, I have phoned them to see what is happening. I am told that they often take a long time, and to leave it to the end of the week and check again. Well, thanks, but I had noticed that it takes a long time. During that time, our savings sit in an account with 0.15% interest.

I understand the desire to avoid money laundering, but wonder why it should be assumed that the holder of a Dutch passport is more likely to try this than the holder of a UK one; and why it is assumed that an international drug dealer should be incapable of getting a utility bill in his name, or should not have a passport? Couldn’t the banks agree on one set of proof, and once it is passed, accept it for any new account?