"How can my bank be sure I'm who I say I am?"
Howard Jacobson
The Independent
14 June 2003I am being attacked by my own phone Correction: I'm being attacked by my bank, but they're doing it through my phone. They ring me up and then ask me to identify myself.
"I'm who you rang," I tell them.
"Yes, but how do we know that?"
"Because you rang me."
"But what if it's not you? What if you're your son? Or your father?"
"It's a chance you take," I tell them. "How do! know, for example, that you're who you say you are?"
They want to know my date of birth and my mother's maiden name. At my age lam likely to have forgotten both. And anyway, since they ring me every day to ask me, there's a better chance that they'll know than that I will.
"Dostoyevsky," I say. "I think my mother's maiden name was Dostoyevsky. What's yours?"
The bank won't tell me its mother's maiden name. I have to trust the bank Given that they've been taking my money for 40 years, know my phone number, know my voice, know my credit details, know how pissed off I always am when they ring, you'd think that by now they'd trust me. The trouble is they don't know it is me. It might be my father or my son who's pissed off. I might be impersonating myself I might even be my own burglar.
Actually, that's not right. It isn't me they say they don't know, they say it's my address. Yes, they write to me and ring me here, but that apparently isn't enough. They need further proof.
"Why do you need further proof?" I ask "Further woof against what?"
"Terrorism. Government regulations, post Osama bin Laden, say that banks mist ascertain for absolutely certain that people live where they say they live, otherwise they could be terrorists laundering money. If Osama bin Laden is himself having trouble managing his funds at present, that's the reason they aren't sure where he resides. And when they ring him to ask his mother's maiden name, he puts the phone down. Which, I suppose they'd argue, is proof the system's working.
Recently I suggested to the bank that if they wanted to be sure I lived where I said I live they should send someone round to check Let him even interest me, if he wished, in the bank's latest offers and inducements. New cards, new borrowing arrangements, carpets, whatever. Good idea. John, he was called. Hi, John, welcome to my home. But it appeared that finding me here still wasn't conclusive proof. What if I was my son, sleeping over? What if I had just let myself in through a window? I showed him my photograph. "Me," I said. He wasn't convinced. If it was me, how come I was smiling?
What it turned out he needed was documentation. Paper not flesh. A bank statement, say, dated lathe past three months. "Hang on," I said, "are you telling me that if I show you a statement from your bank, addressed to me here where you don't believe I live and to which address you therefore have no business sending statements, all will be well?"
Yes, he said. That should be fine. Even though it would be fine he took a photocopy of the statement just in case. But then must have forgotten to show it to the relevant personages, because the new business he got me to agree in cannot be initiated on account of there being no proof I live where I say I live.
Yesterday I rang them before they could ring me. "I was born on X," I told then 'My mother's maiden name is Y, and now I want the card you refuse to send me."
Hilary. "Hello, the adviser you are dealing with today is Hilary. How can I help you?"
"By sending me the card."
She asked me not to be abusive.
"Just send me the effing card,
Can't. Won't. No trace of me at my address.
Then how come John knew where to find me, Hilary?
She is barely comprehensible.
Which might be because the call centre is in Manchester and not Calcutta. She seems to be using the word experience. I rely on it, she tells me... If you are relying on your experience, I reply, it should tell you that I would never have been offered this card you won't send me unless someone had known where to find me to offer it me in the first place...
She told me I misunderstood her. I laughed... "I think I understand you only too well, Hilary. You say you are experienced but you won't call on that experience to make a common sense decision. The card, Hilary. The card!"
But I had misunderstood her. She had said she was relying on Experient-ent, ent-a credit ratings firm, evidently popular with banks. It was the spooks working for Experient who couldn't find me.
Imagine that my own hank, with whom I've been dealing for 40 years or more, which knows the details of my life more intimately than I do myself, my outgoings and my incomings, my birthdays, the entire history of my financial perturbations, my mother's maiden name, everything my own bank is checking up on me with a credit ratings firm.
Kafka was right They will come to our lodgings in frock coats and top hats and they will cut our throats. Though since they don't know who lives where there is always a chance they will cut the wrong person's.
From 'The Independent', 14 June 2003 Reprinted 15 May 2004, 'Newspaper of the Year' supplement, p. 16