Unfortunate experience with Motive, not impressed. | Page 2 | Motive Financial | Discussion forum

Doug said
There's a number of alternate single- and dual-process FINTRAC methods to validate identity, but banks and credit unions don't have to offer all of them. Some, like Tangerine and Simplii Financial, will instruct you to visit a Canada Post retail postal outlet and show your government issued photo ID whereby a representative of the post office, presumably, verifies it's not expired, enters your ID number, jurisdiction, and/or expiry date and then has you sign on the signature pad. Presumably, there's some sort of button they click as a final step that says "ID verified." However, this adds cost to the bank or credit union requesting it. Motive Financial is just a small virtual banking branch of Canadian Western Bank and likely doesn't have the budget for that.  

I think Doug is zeroing in on the heart of the problem, or at least a good chunk of it.
As I suggested in post above, there is an inconsistency in what is required, and banks have considerable latitude, although most choose not to exercise much of it. The consumer doesn't know what to expect and has to deal with responses that make no sense,

I don't have the time or energy to go through everything that is in the FINTRAC doc that Norman provided and write up a full critique, but, if you look at it in any detail, it becomes clear that banks can decide to accept quite a variety of identifiers as long as they come from a "reliable" source. The definition of this reliability is so subjective and redundant as to be almost laughable: "A reliable source is an originator or issuer of information that you trust to verify the identity of the client. When you are relying on a source to verify an individual’s name and address or an individual’s name and date of birth, the source must be reliable. To be considered reliable, the source should be well known and considered reputable, and be one that you trust to verify the identity of the individual."

Personally, I think my mom and my best friend from Kindergarten are very reliable sources of my identity and that they would be happy to write a letter to this effect. I dare anyone to prove them less qualified than Equifax. Mom is pretty old, but she still knows who I am and can identify the secret birthmark, since she put it there. She's also the world's leading expert on my date of birth, seared as it is in her memory as one of extreme pain and, hopefully, some joy. (Hint: You're supposed to laugh now, but I hope I've made my point. The system has become so bureaucratized that apparently nobody knows who anybody is any more and nobody can trust their own common sense to realize that a list of bank transactions do not an identity make, so must rely on documents generated by people who don't know you at all and would never know if a document were inaccurate and might not even know if it had been tampered with).
The Passport Office used to provide a list of "reliable" folks to endorse your photo. Worked pretty well as far as I know. I don't know if they still do that.

It may well be that Motive has chosen not to afford the services of Canada Post and the like. Under the current system, that's their decision.

But the problem isn't just with the banks. It's with FINTRAC and its guidelines. That page must have been written by a committee!

I note that the purpose of all this is to prevent money laundering. It's not for the purpose of protecting your identity or your money, although that may also happen to some extent.

I have no doubt that such "debates" would not work in one's favour.

But even FINTRAC, the monster that apparently must be satisfied, can't give an exhaustive list of what would satisfy it, only "examples".

The system is very flawed, on both the part of Fintrac and the banks, never mind the decidedly un-"reliable" equifax and transunion, who have way too much power and, as you came close to pointing out, are simply private businesses and are apparently not really accountable for the quality or accuracy of their information.

Personally, I don't really have a quarrel with any of it as I've never been turned down for anything. My only problem, such as it is, has been with the credit agencies as my records there are very very sparse and do not include everything that they ought to. I hear lots about people trying to get info changed or removed, but I have no idea how to get them to add things. - e.g. the credit card I've had for almost 40 years!

This is the reason why I haven't opened a Motive account yet. I know there will be a big hassle and I'm not ready for it. For me, my issue is that my middle name and first name have their order mixed on different official documents. Motive, naturally, will think I'm a hacker terrorist assassin and make it very difficult for me to open an account.

LeBronBMT said

… For me, my issue is that my middle name and first name have their order mixed on different official documents. Motive, naturally, will think I'm a hacker terrorist assassin and make it very difficult for me to open an account.

Would this not be a good time to have the documents corrected?

Decades ago, no-one really cared if one's name in the passport was "Robert Brown" and the name on airline ticket was a slightly different "Bob Brown". Now, the passenger could be denied boarding at the gate.

There could also be problems at the land titles office if the death certificate is for "Robert Brown" but the registered joint owners, with right to sponsorship, are "Bob Brown" and "Alice Brown".