Santander To Relax New Account Screening Process With Less Reliance On ChexSystems

Santander have announced that they will change how they screen new accounts. Currently Santander uses ChexSystems to check an applicants history with deposit accounts, any and all negative items are recorded (e.g bounced checks, accounts closed with a negative balance and any suspected fraud like check kiting).

At the moment Santander uses a scoring product that is offered by ChexSystems (similar to the FICO score that is used on Equifax, Experian & TransUnion credit reports), this scoring model is used to determine the risk a consumer represents when it comes to potential losses and fraud.

The change that Santander has announced is that the new scoring system will only look at the following factors: if any previous accounts have been closed due to fraud and if any Santander accounts were overdrawn, closed and not paid back.

This means that consumers that have a negative item on their ChexSystems report such as a bounced check will be able to pass the new screening process and get an account with Santander. This new policy will come into effect nationwide in September 30th, 2015.

Citibank & Capital One have also made similar pledges in recent times. These changes have all been lead by the New York Attorney General’s office. It’s really good to see New York’s A.G being pro-active when it comes to this, far to many consumers are unbanked/underbanked due to poor past behavior that is no longer indicative of how they’d currently use a deposit account.

It should be no surprise that New York Attorney’s General office is so involved, it’s estimated that 9.7% of New Yorkers are considered unbanked or underbanked. I’d be surprised if other financial institutions don’t follow the lead of Citibank, Capital One & Santander. According to Reuters, JP Morgan Chase is the next on the agenda.

Santander should’t have much issue attracting unbanked or underbanked customers, given that they are currently running a bank promotion where you can get $20 per month for free from Santander, which is one of our favorite bank bonuses currently.

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Bill
Bill (@guest_102517)
April 11, 2015 19:24

Their online application is still different than in-branch, with the online representative telling that they had higher belief in a driver’s license handed to a branch representative than presented online.

Applied online and was forced through a verification process that even after sending in the current license, passport, and image of a Social Security card was still denied. They provide no letters as to why the online application was denied, no reason, no indications as to bureau(s) used. In fact, one only finds out they’ve been denied an online account opening by calling and asking because there is no written response. The representative suggested I should bring utility bills, pay stubs, bank statements, to verify my address.

In branch, the representative looked at my non-expired license, asked for my social security number, and didn’t need to see anything further.

So, I have my account information because I visited a branch. The representative who opened the account branch apologized for the confusion, but said it worked well for them. (I’m guessing the branch gets credit for the account opening)

Mike
Mike (@guest_81136)
February 24, 2015 15:40

Any insight into how Santander’s extra20 accounts might be affected after the March 20 transition? Apparently most bank accounts will need to start coding bank to bank ACH deposits with P2P. On the fatwallet link below (around the last 2-3 pages) some mentioned Ally was no longer working for them, and others coded with P2P in the transaction were no longer counting for the DD.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1309419/?start=720