Starling Bank Discussion: Part 2

As someone working in a role/industry that has some pretty intense vetting, I’ve definitely become more conscious about sanity checking what information I hand over about myself instead of doing it just because.

I hadn’t considered the sanity check point of salary vs role others have raised - although I feel they deserve some kind of prize if they could take my job title and benchmark what I ‘should’ earn with how niche it is!

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The salary thing was just an example of how they’d be able to identify potential risk. All banks will need this information, some you’ve no doubt already supplied on account opening, not sure if Starling did in their earlier years hence following up now, or it’s been some time and they want to make sure everything is accurate.

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I suspect all my current banks know my salary (Starling aside). Starling is a throwaway account for me in any case (travel only) so might be next on the chopping block.

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I think the point is that they indeed, rightly, have all that info - unless you suspect me of laundering then you don’t need to know my salary to company hierarchy ratio.

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Pretty sure it’s the know your customer side of the regulations, a standard practice these days

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I think it makes sense, I’d imagine they have models put in place that put you in buckets with people of similar incomes/lifestyle, so anomalies are easier to flag if you move out of those parameters.

Changing topic slightly, I had to transfer a bunch of money today for a car and the starling app paused the transaction and walked me through a bunch of questions that I had to respond to, with a lot of checkpoints to make sure you’re not being coerced or scammed - was a pretty neat feature

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Can anyone point out where in the FCA KYC guidance it states you need to know where someone sits in their company hierarchy? I don’t question for a minute the importance of some of the info they ask for but this particular requirement just feels like asking for the sake of getting it on Starling’s part (clearly they’ve managed without this for years just fine, as have every other bank I’ve ever banked with as none of them have a clue if I’m on an entry position or a CEO!).

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With all due respect, that is a poor attitude to the management of your personal data.
Yes, banks know all the things you mentioned. But from that, can they reliably guess your profession and position in the chain of command?
And if not, why offer them this information if they don’t need it?
You should never offer any item of personal information that is not asked or needed. And you should always question corporations’ and govts’ requests for personal data if you think there is no reason for them to need said data.

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Along with all the other information banks can generally gain, even your location and how you hold your phone, I honestly don’t feel my bank asking my profession is a biggy in the grand scheme of things.

Some random on the internet? Strange emails asking for data? A post-it note on my car asking for more?

I wouldn’t entertain responding.

There’s obviously going to be friction in certain scenarios, but if you’re not willing to cooperate with your bank asking reasonable information about how you manage your account for your, and their interests, then I guess just close em all up and hide all your monies under your mattress.

It’s a simple request from a regulated entity you already share so much with, and have a detailed agreement with.

These requests that pop up also tell you why they need it.

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The point is, i don’t think where I sit in my company hierarchy is reasonable and clearly I’m not the only one.

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It is part of a wider problem with society - which over decades has ended up with UK citizens being some of the most spied on in the world. Very few, as you have just demonstrated, seems to care about data creep.

Would love to know why a personal bank account needs to know my position in a company. I’m not debating whether they have to ask for it or not. It is the very fact that they do, and how we got to that position to start with.

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Thanks for putting into words what I failed to. It’s creeping normalisation for any company to ask for more and more info.

In another example, TV licensing got in touch with me as I don’t have a licence. I can use a form online to opt out - but you have to give them a name, email address and phone number. Why?! I don’t want to be their customer yet they ask for this info to opt out. It’s such a worrying trend.

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I think it’s more generalized opposed to specific.

Like there’s no option of collections/recoveries/financial health, but there would be a collective for unskilled or whatever that would fall under (I can’t remember what I use).

Each to their own I guess.

TV licensing is something else :sweat_smile: IE shouldn’t exist.

Agree contact information probably isn’t relevant, they do check though (apparently) so may like to address you by name if they did need to contact, of whose responsible for that property. Having said that, they could just write to you instead.

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Whether or not you agree with the TV license, there are issues with how easy/difficult it is to use. I don’t understand why you can’t pay monthly for that month only. This will not only mean less time has to be spent with evidence for refunds etc, but will likely make people have a better opinion of the service, which is never a bad thing.

At the moment, the monthy payment works stupidly imo. So let’s say the license fee for a year is £144. If you choose to pay monthly, you will be paying £24 every month for 6 months, so by this point, you will have paid for an entire year. You then pay £12 every subsequent month for the next year of license fee. Why do they think this is a good idea? Why can’t they just manage the license fee like Netflix and Disney+?

And yes, I know this isn’t Starling bank, but I’m not expecting a full-on discussion about this.

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Hopefully not much longer and it’s scrapped so people don’t need to stress about it.

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Would literally be worst thing to happen to public service broadcasting in the UK.

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Yep. I think the system can be improved, like what I said before, but scrappng it completely would be terrible for the BBC, but that fits what the country seems to be doing now - ruining everything good about it. People wont know how much they value it until it has gone.

But I think unless we set of a thread about this, we need to start talking about Starling again.

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8 posts were merged into an existing topic: TV Licences?

@AlanDoe can ya shift all the TV license stuff out of the Starling thread and to the one Revels posted above :eyes:

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