The other day I had a truly exciting email. It seems that I have a long-lost uncle in Nigeria who, unbeknownst to me, was a wealthy industrialist. Sadly, my newfound uncle recently passed away, leaving his entire multimillion-dollar estate to myself. All I have to do to get those funds is to deposit some money in a local bank account to ensure the transfer from there to here happens seamlessly. I’m super pumped and can’t wait to do something with that money in memory of my dearly departed, and newly discovered, relative.
Of course, there is a slight chance that I might be disappointed and the email was a scam. The chance that my long lost uncle is, in fact, a figment of someone’s imagination. Time will, as they say, tell.
Thinking about that email had me recounting an experience I had recently. Now very few people use cash anymore, but from time to time at the Cactus Outdoor retail stores, we do have people paying with the proverbial folding. Every now and then, therefore, we have to take said cash to the bank to deposit into our bank account.
This process is a bit onerous these days since our lovely local banks (who are all, of course, owned offshore) have decided that no one actually wants to visit a physical bank or talk to a real-life bank teller. Nowadays most bank branches have been closed down and the ones that still exist seem to open for about 15 minutes a day.
Given this depressing trend, we investigated the idea of having Armorguard, the secure courier service, pick up our cash and take it to the bank. That seems a simple enough idea and a process that should be pretty quick to get set up, right?
Unfortunately, in New Zealand, we have Anti Money Laundering regulations. Anti Money Laundering or AML for short, is an attempt to stop people, as the name implies, money laundering. What it does is ensure that the person making a banking transaction or for that matter, dealing with a lawyer or accountant is in fact the person they say they are.
To fulfil AML regulations an individual needs to tender a certified copy of an approved identification document, a passport or a license for example. In addition, they need to show a recent utility bill confirming their address.
As someone who serves on a number of different boards, I am a signatory on perhaps 25 different bank accounts. What that means, despite the fact that many of those bank accounts are held with the same trading bank, is that for every single bank account, I need to go through the interminable process to become AML compliant.
As I was setting up our service with Armorguard, the salesperson at the other end of the email told me that in order to have our cash picked up. I would also have to comply with AML regulations. I got a little bit weirded out at this point.
Armorguard are essentially a bicycle courier riding a very, very heavily armoured bicycle. If I send my mate Jim to the bank with some cash to deposit into my account, that works fine. If I order a regular NZ Post courier to come pick up my cash and drop it off at the bank with a deposit slip that is similarly A-OK.
But somehow having once every month or two an Armorguard service pick up cash means that I need to go through that awful AML process.
As is my usual modus operandi, I whined about this on LinkedIn to which a number of people concurred and suggested that AML is a case of regulation gone rampant. Many correspondents suggested that the AML rules while providing a real boon to back office functionaries who shuffle pieces of paper, do absolutely nothing to actually keep people safe.
It’s regulation, but regulation with little rhyme or reason.
So, at a very macro level, one has to question the efficacy of our AML rules and whether or not the significant drag they create for people who simply want to, in my case, deposit a small amount of cash into their bank account once a month is actually worth it. More specifically, and also related to my example, I simply do not understand why the method of delivering that cash to the bank is a determinant of whether or not one needs to be AML compliant.
As I wrote before, in theory, I could get one of our retail staff to trundle down to the bank on the 15 minutes or so a day that it’s actually open with a deposit slip to deposit said cash. Other than the fact that the bank is hardly ever open and that when it is the queues are longer than the 15-minute window of opportunity that they have, they can do so with no barriers. But yet when it comes to having Armorguard pick up my money, no such luck.
Now of course it must be said that AML compliance is a requirement, In the scheme of things, my tribulations are not the biggest problem in the world.
I also need to reflect upon the fact that I’m fortunate in that when I finally get my recently deceased uncle’s funds into my bank account, I’ll never need to worry again because those hundreds of millions of dollars will mean that my working days will be over and I can live a life of like luxury sitting in a palatial pad by the beach somewhere.
But as a function of public service, before I swan off into the Nigerian sunset, I really thought writing this article was worthwhile.
