Australian Banks Preparing to Debank Men Accused of Financial Abuse. By Bettina Arndt.
Earlier this month, Nigel Farage’s bank announced they were closing his accounts. …
Last week, the National Australia Bank (NAB) announced a plan to ‘cut off’ customers found to be financial abusers, spelling out this means suspending, cancelling, or denying such people access to their accounts.
They call this ‘debanking’ – cutting off the accounts of anyone who is accused of being a financial abuser.
But how will the banks prove they are dealing with actual perpetrators of this abuse? No problem. It seems to be a case of believe women! Here’s the Australian Banking Association (ABA) explaining that their guidelines on financial abuse specify no evidence is required if a woman claims her partner is an abuser:
“The guideline recognises that banks don’t need legal evidence of domestic violence, such as an Apprehended Violence Order, to be able to offer assistance to customers” said the ABA Executive.
What guarantees are there in place that this new power will not be abused or lead to the damage of, for example, an ex-hubby’s credit rating at the hands of an angry spouse? We know that messy domestic situations can be abused by both sides. This banking ploy is not yet implemented, but rather simply recommended by the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety report, Designed to Disrupt, which maps out plans to use banks as a means to tackle suspected financial abuse. No doubt feminists see this as a great idea. Others remain less enthusiastic. …
What we are talking about here is banks deliberately trashing what is likely to be a man’s credit rating as punishment when that person has not been convicted, charged, and perhaps not even notified of the accusations. Doesn’t that take the cake? It provides a lot of scope for misuse.
Systemic sexism:
That example is for the future, but right now we have one major Australian bank already cutting off men’s accounts and others lining up to do so. These institutions never actually admit that the new apparatus is primarily targeting men, although it is hinted at through the general wording of the proposal which leans heavily on the assumption that women are the main victims of the domestic and financial abuse this system attempts to address. By extension, men will primarily be on the receiving end of the debanking.
The carefully orchestrated campaign enlisting our banks to tackle financial abuse has been promoted by the key organisations within the domestic violence industry which are, in my opinion, shameless in their anti-male rhetoric. Major banks are also known to finance some of these organisations with large donations. …
Bank promotions on this subject never seem to feature any male victims of financial violence, but tend to include numerous photographs of miserable, downtrodden women. A bit of equality might be nice. Given the competing sensitivities of identity, virtue signalling in this territory demands a very careful tightrope walk.
Already happening?
So, are men being targeted already? It’s hard to tell, but Andrew, one of my key researchers, reports an intriguing interrogation that took place after his partner transferred a significant amount of money into his transaction account, which they’d planned to shift into a share trading account. Since the amount was beyond his normal transaction limit, Andrew called the bank to arrange it. The operator put him on hold and then transferred him to her supervisor.
To his surprise, the supervisor quickly started grilling him about his partner’s transaction, asking about the nature of their relationship, how close they were, whether they had just broken up and other personal questions. Andrew explained they were friends and declined to answer further questions on the topic. He was then threatened with the possibility that both his accounts might be frozen. He passed the phone to his partner and asked her to try to sort it out. After an intense conversation, his partner convinced the supervisor not to freeze his accounts. Andrew then took the phone back and said he wished to lodge an official complaint. It was some months later that Andrew received a call from his bank saying that, after investigation, the bank wished to apologise for what had happened.
Could you function without a bank account? Got gold?
