10 years ago, I graduated Uni with no debt and about $1,000 net worth.
My first job (engineer) paid $100k/yr. After taxes & expenses, I saved $70k per year for 3 years.
With $200k net worth, I lived on $5k per year and for the past 7 years, I worked only 30% of the time – just enough to cover my expenses without dipping into my savings.
This year I sold bitcoin (bought for $7,000. sold for $1,000,000). My target to retire-retire was $800,000, so I’ve finally reached my goal.
The sell orders executed so fast that I don’t know where to put it. I already stuffed every US bank that I have to the $250k FDIC max, but my last sell order exceeds that. I’ve applied to open bank accounts with maybe 100 banks in the US, and I’ve only succeeded in opening 1. My requirements:
[1] No monthly fees
[2] No inactivity fees
[3] No phone or phone number required
[4] Online Banking with 2FA support (TOTP, Webauthn, or email)
99% of the banks that I’ve tried to open with auto-deny me. My credit is great. When I call and ask why, they say something about the information I gave them not matching their records. The ones that have an appeal process told me “the system” denied me, and there’s nothing they can do – even supervisors.
My long-term plan is to buy a small condo in a city and a lot of land in the country. But it’ll probably take me 6-24 months to find and finish those deals, and in the meantime I want to keep my money somewhere safe.
I’m also a bit worried about the USD tanking. I’ve looked into banks in Europe and Canada, but Canada requires a tax ID and I only speak English. Can anyone recommend a very stable bank abroad (with English language support) that a US American can open remotely that meets the above requirements?
Where would you put your money if you were in my situation?
My guess is AI.
I can’t say for sure because when I ask them, they won’t tell me. But it seems like they use some third party to process their applications, and that third parry is probably using some sort of machine-learning or private AI algorithm that’s throwing a false-positive. Two things would fix this:
Right now it appears that the third party that tells the bank “yeah, don’t open this account” doesn’t really say why. Kinda like how AI doesn’t tell you what it was trained-on to decide what word it should say next. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Update: one time a bank did enumerate exactly which pieces of information that I supplied caused the rejection, due to not being able to verify its authenticity. One of them was my email address. One was my employer. I was never asked to prove the authenticity of this data. I emailed them asking what they need to authenticate my information, and they send me back another generic message that I had been rejected.
I work for a major US bank. We use AI for a lot of stuff, but not for determining if someone should be allowed to open an account.
Banking is a heavily regulated industry and there are federal “know your customer” rules that we abide by. They exist for a variety of reasons which mostly all boil down to anti-money laundering.
Sure, but that’s not what’s happening.
I’ve submitted my passport and all the KYC info required by law. I was denied before they ever asked me for the source of the income. This isn’t related to KYC/AML. If it is, then they’re not doing their job of even trying to collect the data. I’ve asked if they need any further documents, but I’m just told to apply again. I apply again, it doesn’t ask for additional documents, and I get denied. Every time.
Interesting! Authentication sounds probably right