Unfortunately, all banks and financial service companies sometimes have to block accounts. We’ll never block an account without a valid reason, and when we do, it is never to defraud or steal from anyone. This article explains why this very rare situation can happen and what you can expect next.
We block accounts only as a legal requirement
Regulations exist to protect you. As an e-money institution, we’re regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This means we must follow clearly defined rules and codes of conduct. The FCA ensures we comply with laws designed to protect people and companies.
We must comply with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules. These rules require us to act in specific ways if we detect or suspect that a Soldo account is being used for criminal activity. These measures exist to protect people from terrorists, money launderers and other criminals.
We freeze accounts to protect your money
Our fraud team and systems work to identify potentially fraudulent access to Soldo accounts. This is extraordinarily rare, but if we spot something suspicious, we may freeze an account to confirm that the person attempting access is the legitimate account holder. Once we’re satisfied you are who you say you are, we automatically restore access.
We freeze accounts if we suspect criminal activity
We can’t detail every reason why an account might be blocked, and we can’t explain how we detect fraudulent activity. Criminals adapt quickly, and we must prevent them from learning how to bypass our security. However, we can outline the types of situations where we may freeze a Soldo account:
- High-risk customers – If another financial institution flags a customer to us as being linked to financial crime in their own systems, we’ll freeze the Soldo account to investigate.
- Unusual activity – There are certain behaviours that suggest money laundering or other criminal activity. To protect people’s money, we may freeze an account while we review the activity.
- Police instruction – During financial crime investigations, law enforcement can instruct us to block access to an account. We must comply with these instructions.
The next step
When activity on an account reaches a certain level of suspicion, we’ll freeze the account and report it to the National Crime Agency (NCA).
After we’ve submitted a report, we can’t take any action until we hear back from the NCA. This is a strict legal requirement.
We can’t tell people why we’ve blocked their account
We understand this can be frustrating. Regulations are very clear that we’re not allowed to give any information about why an account has been blocked. We’re not trying to be difficult. We must follow the law exactly as written.
Very occasionally, the system identifies false positives
In rare cases, activity may first appear suspicious but later prove to be reasonable, legal and easy to explain. When this happens, we unblock the account and apologise to the customer.
It’s all designed to protect people’s money
Financial services are regulated for good reason. After previous industry failures, regulators stepped in to prevent activity that could put people’s money at risk or allow criminals to gain unfairly.
We follow these rules to ensure that honest people don’t lose out because of criminal activity. This helps ensure that money held with Soldo remains safe.