Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town on 2016-03-01.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the Financial Conduct Authority’s oversight of anti-money-laundering regulations in the light of consumer complaints about enforced, unannounced and unexplained closures of bank accounts.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

The Government encourages banks to take a risk based approach in its activities to ensure that measures they take are effective, proportionate and mitigate the risks that they face. In doing so the Government also encourages them to have due regard to financial inclusion.

Whilst it would be inappropriate for the Government to intervene in these decisions, individuals are able to request a review of the decision to close their bank account using the bank’s formal complaint procedure and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).