A bank's right to know
Posted: May 13th, 2022, 6:42 pm
I've started to get annoying and persistent messages from Starling Bank. They need more information from me.
Today I ill-advisedly clicked yes to updating my information. The first question was my tax residency: OK, (probably) fair enough. Though horribly poorly designed: I had to scroll a long, long way through an alphabetical list of countries to select UK. Nothing so sensible as defaulting to the country my address is in (erm, UK), or even allowing me to type "u" to reach that part of the alphabet.
Second question is about my income. How much (in bands), where from (multiple choice, no option for "it's complicated", let alone "mind your own effing business"). I think there were about five subsections to the income question, but in the absence of "none of the above" I stopped at #2. Now the nag has become more persistent
Do they have any legal right whatsoever to demand this kind of information from an existing customer? I don't recollect what information I gave when I opened the account, but I guess whatever they asked back then seemed fair enough.
Today I ill-advisedly clicked yes to updating my information. The first question was my tax residency: OK, (probably) fair enough. Though horribly poorly designed: I had to scroll a long, long way through an alphabetical list of countries to select UK. Nothing so sensible as defaulting to the country my address is in (erm, UK), or even allowing me to type "u" to reach that part of the alphabet.
Second question is about my income. How much (in bands), where from (multiple choice, no option for "it's complicated", let alone "mind your own effing business"). I think there were about five subsections to the income question, but in the absence of "none of the above" I stopped at #2. Now the nag has become more persistent
Do they have any legal right whatsoever to demand this kind of information from an existing customer? I don't recollect what information I gave when I opened the account, but I guess whatever they asked back then seemed fair enough.