Bank Account Screening Tool Is Scrutinized as Excessive
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and MICHAEL CORKERY JUNE 15, 2014 9:00 PM
In her early college years, when Charlette Williams started routinely mismanaging her finances and pushing her checking account balance into the red, she never thought the mistakes would haunt her five years later, she said. Now, she is paying a steep price.
Ms. Williams, a 25-year-old resident of Queens, is one of more than a million Americans who have been effectively blacklisted from the mainstream financial system because they overdrew their accounts or bounced a check — mistakes that routinely bedevil young and low-income consumers, financial counselors say. While Ms. Williams paid back Bank of America the roughly $700 that she owed, a record of her youthful transgressions remains in a vast private database, preventing her from opening a new account.
Such databases, used by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other big banks, were intended to weed out serial fraudsters. Now, regulators say, banks are screening out potential customers and swelling the ranks of the so-called unbanked — the roughly 10 million households in the United States that lack even a basic bank account.
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/bank-account-screening-tool-is-scrutinized-as-excessive/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Banks have been screwing the american public for a good many years and nothing other than a fine, it is time to go after the people that run the banks.
Yeah – the mean banks should stop screwing the American public and allow those who have already proven themselves to be fiscally irresponsible with their old accounts to open new accounts.
Banks should also give new loans to people who defaluted on old loans.
Here’s a concept: Actions ==> Consequences
Why should other account holders subsidize these deadbeats?
Let them get Obama accounts, just like their Obama-phones.
I agree with consequences, but i’am not wrong about banks in general.