South African banking group Standard Bank said on Wednesday that it has placed restrictions on the accounts of a small number of customers who have failed to comply with Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica) requirements to reidentify themselves.
These customers, who are mainly private, priority, corporate and business banking customers, have ignored the bank’s repeated requests to reidentify themselves, the bank said in a statement.
The account restrictions follow numerous attempts by the bank to get these customers to reidentify themselves. The bank has called them twice and sent them each a registered letter.
These customers will not be able to withdraw money from their accounts until they have gone to their branch to reidentify themselves.
“We regret the inconvenience, but in terms of Fica legislation we are obliged to freeze the accounts of uncooperative customers,” said Johan van Schalkwyk, director of central processing operations at Standard Bank.
He said that it in terms of the bank’s total number of accounts, it is only a very small portion of Standard Bank customers whose accounts will be inoperable.
He added that he was encouraged to see that nearly 50% of the customers who had restrictions placed on their accounts have subsequently gone to their branches to reidentify themselves.
“This means that they are again able to transact on their accounts,” said Van Schalkwyk.
Standard Bank has allocated significant resources in the form of a dedicated call centre, additional staff in branches, and a centralised processing unit to reidentify existing clients. — I-Net Bridge