Bank of America wants too much info

I have been pestered with phone calls from Bank of America- lately. I had been sent a questionnaire asking for more info that a passport application.....figured it was some sort of scam and chucked it. They have now moved on to the phone calls so I thought I would do some investigating- on the Web.

Bank of America is asking customers to prove citizenship to access their own money

From- https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...o-prove-citizenship-to-access-their-own-money

From- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bank-of-america-citizenship-question_n_5b88470ae4b0cf7b00339747

I don't know what is going on.......If you are "in deep" with BOA, seems like a massive over-reach to me.

OM

That is funny. At my neighborhood BoA, many years ago they started to court the spanish speaking crowd by employing spanish speaking employees, signs in spanish, etc. Over the years, I have obeserved the Hispanic community go from only cashing checks at the bank(and holding on to the cash) to actually using the ATM to depoit checks, deposit/withdraw cash, etc. I would not have thought the bank worried about immigrant status; their almighty dollar was paramount to their bottom line.

Strange, indeed.

Maybe I am missing something, but why would you need to be a USA resident to open a bank account? I would think if you can prove your identity it would make no difference what country you live in to open an account.

PoorUB said:

Maybe I am missing something, but why would you need to be a USA resident to open a bank account? I would think if you can prove your identity it would make no difference what country you live in to open an account.

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Who knows what the vagaries of fed banking law are! A legal- non-citizen status may not be a problem but if someone were here illegally and they were working without ss# OR TID (taxpayer id#) that could be a problem as the bank MAY then be actually laundering money or some such thing.

rick601 said:

Who knows what the vagaries of fed banking law are! A legal- non-citizen status may not be a problem but if someone were here illegally and they were working without ss# OR TID (taxpayer id#) that could be a problem as the bank MAY then be actually laundering money or some such thing.

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If you have opened an account, loan, mortgage lately, past few years, it’s rather complicated to get going. BOA, is requesting way too much information just to have BOA supply a credit card.
I haven’t seen other CC providers ask for more information from long time CC customers.
OM

Omega Man said:

If you have opened an account, loan, mortgage lately, past few years, it’s rather complicated to get going. BOA, is requesting way too much information just to have BOA supply a credit card.
I haven’t seen other CC providers ask for more information from long time CC customers.
OM

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agreed...their app was a pia too...bye bye BOA

Forget the whole mortgage thing with ANY bank- it's exasperating!

But to your original point and PoorUB's musing- non-citizenship shouldn't be an issue, legal status might legitimately be an issue for the bank- but if they are the only ones doing that then something is rotten in the state of BOA

This issue has more to do with massive amounts of illegal drug money being moved around the world, much of it through legal banking systems. BoA may be "overreaching" a bit with their interpretations of the fed monetary laws, but I suspect all of us suffer some amount of this sort of privacy invasion with our banks. I am a long-time customer (30+ years) with my local bank and I still was asked for what I considered too much personal info and too much "nosyness" when I opened a new account for my college granddaughter. I simply bit my tongue and filled out the forms . . . (sigh)