A huge number of prescriptions, instructions and sanctions led to the fact that American banks refuse to serve preventively, without risk analysis. The US Ministry of Finance intends to conduct explanatory work with banks.
The US Ministry of Finance intends to warn the country’s banks against excessively strict enforcement of sanction requirements, which leads to frequent and unjustified refusals of service to customers, reports Bloomberg .
According to the agency, high-ranking officials of the US Treasury are planning meetings with bank managers in 2023 to “eliminate this dangerous trend.” In their view, banks are being overly cautious and turning away customers who may need them the most.
Thus, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for Combating Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, plans to travel to Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego in January for meetings with bankers.
“When financial institutions engage in de-risking — the indiscriminate loss of financial access for entire categories of customers — ordinary Americans may be forced to turn to unregulated and potentially dangerous financial activities,” the agency quoted Nelson as saying.
Bloomberg notes that successive US administrations have imposed various sanctions quickly and sometimes without much clarity, expecting financial institutions to comply on their own. At the same time, banks that violate sanctions are threatened with large fines, so they often show extreme caution to anything that can be considered an object of sanctions risk.
The goal of the Ministry of Finance is to guarantee that no one will be deprived of financial services just because some institution preemptively disconnects suspicious persons from services instead of assessing real risks.
