My Banks Evidently Don't Know Who I Am
Oct. 4th, 2021 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalker"Know Your Customer". That's the name of a set of regulations in financial services industries around the world. In the US these requirements were mandated by the USA Patriot Act of 2001 to thwart money laundering used for, among other things, funding foreign terrorist organizations. Know Your Customer means understanding a client's financial situation— job, income, assets, financial habits— to spot unusual transactions. In that sense a few of my banks/brokers I've been with for years evidently don't know me.
"You're qualified to borrow up to $5,000!" screamed the headline in an email from a major bank I've had an account with for 10 years. "Interest rate only 5.98% APY," it added in smaller print.
WTF? If they looked at my financial information they'd see that offer is a joke. One, I don't need to borrow $5k. Two, 6% is a laughably bad rate. I have loans dwarfing that in size at rates from less than half to less than one-sixth that rate. I'm supposed to pay 6x t for a joke-sized loan when I could just write a check for 10x that amount from cash on hand?
It's not just that one bank. Another financial institution I've had an account with for 25 years keeps offering me joke-sized little loans with joke-sized high interest rates, too.
Update: a few days later the same bank increased the offer: $30,000... with a 10.99% interest rate!
"You're qualified to borrow up to $5,000!" screamed the headline in an email from a major bank I've had an account with for 10 years. "Interest rate only 5.98% APY," it added in smaller print.
WTF? If they looked at my financial information they'd see that offer is a joke. One, I don't need to borrow $5k. Two, 6% is a laughably bad rate. I have loans dwarfing that in size at rates from less than half to less than one-sixth that rate. I'm supposed to pay 6x t for a joke-sized loan when I could just write a check for 10x that amount from cash on hand?
It's not just that one bank. Another financial institution I've had an account with for 25 years keeps offering me joke-sized little loans with joke-sized high interest rates, too.
Update: a few days later the same bank increased the offer: $30,000... with a 10.99% interest rate!
