We helped draft and enact the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and have participated in litigation through the years to strengthen it. We nonetheless object to what appear to be sweeping changes in the traditional relationship between ordinary law-abiding citizens and their banks. This is a radical departure from the traditional relationship between banks and bank customers, who have hitherto regarded their personal financial transactions as private and the bank as a neutral facilitator, not a critical observer. Potential for harassment of customers. It appears that whenever a customer gets money from a source or spends it for a purpose the bank did not anticipate, the bank is supposed to record this, call the customer to account and perhaps report them to the Federal Reserve Board for further investigation.
Most people have better things to do than answer such questions.
The time spent to open an account, which can already run to several hours, will be expanded by additional demands for documentation and verification, maybe a visit to our house. Presumably this is means a disadvantage in dealing with legitimate customers, not money-launderers and miscreants. Exclusion of people from the banking system. While it will only be an annoyance for most customers to produce photo ID's and all the other proofs required in this draft, for some customers the enhanced red tape will constitute an absolute bar to opening a bank account. The poorer the person, the more likely this is to be true.