HSBC's Safeguard Froze our business account

[Freelancer87]

HSBC has frozen our business banking account because of their Safeguard program.

A number of months ago we received a letter from them that we needed to complete their internal Safeguard process that is designed to assure we were not laundering money, etc. This would require me to be interviewed over the phone and that would take about an hour.

I was interviewed and all seemed well until we received another letter. They said I needed to be interviewed. The alarm bells starting ringing now as it would appear as though my first interview was "lost".

I went through the same interview and wasted another hour of my time. At the end of that second call, they said if there was anything else they needed, they would contact me....which they never did so I thought all was good.

My suspicion is that our business never went past that process so they thought we didn't complete what they request thus our account is suspended. When I called them to ask why it was suspended, they said they will look at it and get back to me in a couple of days.

We are a small, family run business and this could, in theory, make us close the business down all through no fault of our own.

Has anybody else experienced this atrocious behaviour? We did everything they asked and they can't even give us ANY information for at least a couple of days. This could cripple our business! My gut feeling is my account was pushed to the side and forgotten about. We've done nothing wrong.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

What size is your company is it a limited company and how many foreign payments are processed

 

[MOIC]

Have they suspended all your accounts, or just international USD related currency?

All HSBC banks (in UK & abroad) have followed this procedure and I feel this is very reckless of them to suspend account activity if there is no reasonable assumption that the business account is involved in money laundering. As you mentioned, this can cripple a business.

I'd like to know the legal status on this, if there are any legal observers on the forum.

Has anyone else encountered this problem with HSBC, or any other bank?

 

[Noah]

Try sending that nice man Antonio Simoesan e-mail, and copy in the FCA, and maybe Radio 4 In Business and similar.

Separately, I suggest you start now on setting up a new bank account. You want to move from HSBC anyway, so the sooner the better.

 

[Freelancer87]

UPDATE: I called HSBC the day after my original post and said I wanted to file a formal complaint and asked what the process was for that. I was then put through BACK to the Safeguard team but spoke to somebody further up the food chain. In the meantime, I emailed Watchdog and the Financial Ombudsman (to which I have not heard anything back yet but that's ok)

Our account has since been opened back up.

He said he can see that the day after they suspended my account, that we had passed all their requirements and that within a few days, the account should be opened back up.

We are a small limited company (4 employees) and having our account frozen for any length of time isn't acceptable, especially since we didn't do anything wrong. It clearly seems they dropped the ball.

It just so happened that I had an appointment with an HSBC account manager to raise our overdraft...at the end of the meeting he asked if there was anything else and I said, "YES" and went into a little rant with him. He said he managed an account for a shipping company and their account was frozen for 6 weeks while they straightened things out.

Anyway...all is good now but for the few days the account was closed, it was stressful! Thank goodness payroll was already processed.



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