AF62 wrote:mc2fool wrote:But there would be no hassle until and unless someone tried to fraudulently open an account in their name (and address), and the "disastrous consequences" would come from not informing the original person of it.
You can't see the possibility of the banks mistakenly identifying matches that are not fraudulent applications and all the issues that would flow from that?
What mistaken matches and what issues? The bank doesn't know if it's fraudulent or not -- that's the point of contacting you!
If a new account is opened with your name & address then you are informed of that (by whatever means are available: e.g. by email if the CRA has that, by phone if they have that, or by snail mail letter if all they have is your address). It's then up to you to decide if it's fraudulent or not. On receiving the communication you'll either say to yourself, "yep, I did open that" or you say "oh s*it, that wasn't me" and call the bank in question.
AF62 wrote:mc2fool wrote:And for the accounts that count, i.e. current accounts, loans, etc (you can't rack up debt with a savings a/c, which is why the checks aren't so strict), they do already do checks "properly" (i.e. want sight of passports or the like) and in the cases where an account has been opened fraudulently it's almost certainly 'cos those checks have been defeated, with forged passports or the like, and which notification to the original person would catch.
So the solution is make the banks do checks on all accounts and make them do the checks properly, before venturing down off this suggested route that will only lead to issues.
So you're suggesting that banks make it much more difficult to open an, any, account? That they demand you turn up in person with photo ID, which they eyeball compare you and it, and then take it away and send to their passport/etc forgery experts to make absolutely sure?
AF62 wrote:mc2fool wrote:What, you want to give everybody in the country an ID number? In order for that not to have failings from the start it'd require having everybody providing "proper" proof of who they are, if they haven't already, which means causing hassle to the entire section of the population where the bank holds damn all information other than name and address
I don't want it, because I don't think the proposed database solution is a sensible idea. But if you were going to mess around with that, then you would need to do it properly and that would mean all the issues you suggest.
Ok, good, so we're agreed that the proposed database solution isn't necessary. I doubt that banks allow people to open accounts with just an initial (J Bond) so that's not an issue (although I note my debit cards have just my initial on them, even though the account has my full name, so they obviously deal with initials), and I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of man to know that Jim is short for James. And if you are James Bond and someone opens an account at your address as Joan Bond then it's clearly not you.
Oh, I'm sure there'll be the odd cases that fall through, but let not the perfect be the enemy of the good. A simple matter of the CRAs notifying someone when a new account is opened under their name and address will be painless for the vast majority of cases and only require any hassle if it was fraudulent.