They can close your account anytime | Page 2 | Meridian Credit Union | Discussion forum

Bill said

When I think about it, since I started with ebanks way back with Ing I've moved a ton of money via countless transactions through my TD accounts to/from dozens of e-accounts over the years and never once has TD asked anything. I can see with endlessly increased regulation (now they're even required to tell you when your balance is low, etc, I think, no?) these days of big banks happily facilitating large money flows in and out of their accounts might be coming to an end.

Large amount of funds transiting the account is not in itself an issue as long as a suspicious pattern doesn't develop that indicates possible money laundering or funding of illegal activity.

That's a reason why I try to push funds directly to a destination account. I think it will look suspicious to the bank when my account receives a direct deposit from myself and then the funds are pulled out by a pre-authorized debit also from myself to an account at a third financial institution.

agit said

IMO most of the big 5 bank dont really care\worry about moving large amount as long as it is coming from your own Canadian bank account. but for whatever reason HSBC is the worse probably of HSBC's Money Laundering 2012 Charge.

in regard to low balance alert i believe it is regulation to protect consumers according to the GOV.

Benefits to consumers
Alerts for personal deposit accounts
Your bank will send you an alert when your chequing or savings account is low on funds.

This will help you:

make sure you have enough money in your personal account to cover withdrawals, purchases or pre-authorized payments such as bills
make timely decisions to avoid fees, including late payment charges or non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees  

own experience with HSBC:

Wrote cheque and edeposit to EQ. Twice EQ declined even after the money already left HSBC. No one at EQ can explain the reason and HSBC of course said its entire EQ's issue. Same amount to CIBC no issues at all.

I imagine FI's fraud AI look at patterns and history of transactions (both name and amount) to flag if a transaction looks fishy or not. EQ is just extra cautious to the extent they will hold funds for 5 biz days regardless and cant touch at all. I stop banking with them for that reason (lots of other places that welcome my money anyway)

Those mandatory FINTRAC $10,000+ reports only applies to cash, virtual currency, and electronic cross-border transfers. None of those applies to a push of $50,000, for example, from Hubert to a RBC Royal Bank account.

But, financial institutions can report any transactions that appear suspicious. For example, someone opening an online account and immediately collects $30,000 from ten Interac e-Transfers, at the typical limit of $3,000 each, from ten different banks all sent by person himself or herself. If the financial institution suspects, FINTRAC reports could be submitted eventhough the transfers are not cash and not cross-border.

Yes, transfers from one person's bank account in Canada to the person's bank account in Switzerland of over $10,000 would be reported.

Money laundering is not the movement of money from one person to another. That's easy. Just hand the briefcase of cash to the other person.

Laundering is hiding the "tainted" source. There's also terrorist funding that tries to hide the "tainted" final destination of the money. A person could be sending $20,000 from a Canadian bank account to her own bank account in Pakistan to fund a cash withdrawal by a local accomplice in Pakistan.

The FINTRAC large cash transaction report is for transfers of physical cash/banknotes. That doesn't apply to electronic transfers or transfers by cheque.

The FINTRAC electronic funds transfer report is for electronic transfers into or out of Canada. It doesn't apply to domestic electronic funds transfers.

The FINTRAC suspicious transaction report could be used if the financial institution suspects some domestic electronic funds transfers:

Suspicious transactions
A suspicious transaction report must be submitted to FINTRAC in respect of a financial transaction that occurs or is attempted, and for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the transaction is related to the commission or attempted commission of a money laundering or terrorist activity financing offence. Unlike all other reporting obligations, there is no monetary threshold associated with the reporting of a suspicious transaction.

Briguy said

I think in the future we will see more issues as improperly designed AML algorithms increasingly flag legitimate transactions and result in the FI cancelling your account rather than do a proper investigation.  

Yes, I agree. Others will argue, but it's bad business practice for FIs to rely solely on algorithms when vetting applicants. Motive did the same thing to me as what Meridian did to the OP, and missed out on seven figures of deposits from multiple family members. In contrast, Tangerine also did this to someone in my family, but surprisingly, they had a CS rep take five minutes of their time to resolve the issue through some basic security/ID checks...and were rewarded by getting a new customer and six figures of deposits many times over.

Loonie said
Last time i looked, the neobanks weren't yet regulated at all, so it's the Wild West with them. They could basically be as arbitrary as they like, with impunity.  

You are 100 percent correct. There is no mechanism in place in Canada for appeal if a neobank makes an error with your account or cancels your account. From Wise's website it states, " In Canada, no regulatory body is currently available for consumers to submit complaints against payments companies or Payment Service Providers such as Wise. We encourage you to reach out to your local regulator to support the addition of Complaints against Payment Service Providers under the remit of the Canadian government."
https://wise.com/help/articles/2235393/how-do-i-make-a-complaint?origin=search-complaints

There's no independent avenue for complaints against banks or credit unions in Canada either. Your first choice is your bank's ombudsman, your second and last choice is a banking industry funded ombudsman.