So, we all know Martin Lewis, he quite often promotes the free money when one switches banks. He also says keep one just for switching purposes. So, off I go and start a switch to close one of my “spare” bank accounts.
Now, this new bank has caught on and one of their criteria to get the incentive is to switch from a bank with active direct debits. My “spare” switching bank was dormant and has no DDBTs, so I couldn’t use that. OK, not feeling defeated, I thought I will switch one of my active banks which I use to pay bills from. No big deal, the switching process is pretty failsafe and I’ve done many previously. Other than a bit of inconvenience, the new bank will be my new bill paying bank. There is a small but very significant difference, this old bank was also my IE registered/nominated bank. OK, that seem to be my only hurdle, I don’t think the switching service is capable of changing banks in IE (feel free to comment whether they should or shouldn’t be able to). Technically, the switching service should be able to, since it is just like any DDBT, but for some reason, I didn’t have the faith it would work.
Off I go and empty out this old bank account by asking IE to “add cash” to one of my portfolios. So far so good, it has always worked previously and it seemed to work this time. You can see the tension building up with my choice of words.
Obviously, the next step is to get IE to change my nominated bank. So, off I go and email their support team to get the old bank removed and another bank to become the nominated bank. Not the one I’m switching to. I’m already messing with my DDBTs to utility companies and I don’t want to mess with IE’s nominated bank each time I switch. IE are very good with a response and they actually did the bank swap on the same day I wrote the email. Amazing service I must say.
The next day, I got an email from IE saying, “Please be informed that we had to send back your recent deposit of £xxx.xx as it came from a bank account which has been declined/closed on our system.”
I kind-a flipped and thought this is not real. How can they be so stupid? I was the one to request the removal of the nominated bank. How can changing a nominated bank trigger a security flag to be set? I did reply with an email asking why this is happening and trying to explain why that bank account was closed/removed at my request. Good thing they are thick skinned as I was not very pleasant with my wording. They duly replied and here is the crux of the email “This is a necessary step to ensure compliance and the security of all transactions. Regarding your mention that the account is closed, please rest assured that if this were the case, the funds would not simply disappear—they would be returned to the sender (in this case, InvestEngine).”
This is where I laughed out loud. So, in their attempt to meet compliance, this allegedly dodgy money is still going to end up in IE. I don’t need to do anything, their own strict adherence to rules (box ticked = rear end covered) would have had no preventative effect to stem my alleged laundered money.
With hindsight, I will dedicate a bank specifically for the IE nominated bank and separate from my everyday banking activities. Perhaps you should too?