Dutch banks not doing enough to prevent discrimination in anti-money laundering checks

A study by the Ministry of Finance found that people with non-Western backgrounds experience discrimination most often in contact with their banks. The biggest complaint is excessive checks and controls. Banks must do more to prevent discrimination against their customers, De Nederlandsche Bank said after a separate investigation into multiple reports from banking customers experiencing discrimination during anti-money laundering checks.

"It is unacceptable and very painful that even anyone experiences discrimination, let alone that it takes place," Finance Minister Steven van Weyenberg said. "It is clear to me that action must be taken. Moreover, as a society, we cannot afford for part of the population to feel excluded or treated differently."

Dutch banks have taken measures to prevent discrimination, “but these are not yet concrete or targeted enough,” the DNB said. “Moreover, anti-discrimination policies are often aimed at the bank’s own workplace and not at contact with the customer.”

According to the DNB, one problem is that banks currently look mostly at exclusion when working to prevent discrimination. “But it is also about the risk of different treatment or of being disadvantaged.” Looking at discrimination from that angle, there are several things banks can do to prevent it more effectively, the central bank said.

DNB recommended that banks improve their communication with clients and be clear about why they are being checked. It also urged banks to organize training for all layers of the organization specifically aimed at equal treatment of customers.

In March, the Dutch Banking Association (NVB) acknowledged that ethnically diverse Dutch people are more often subject to checks by their banks for potentially suspicious transactions than people with a Dutch-only background. According to chairman Medy van der Laan, that is because the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing (Prevention) Act requires banks to investigate transactions involving high-risk countries, including places like Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey.

Ethnically diverse people in the Netherlands are more likely to have a link to these countries, for example, because they still have family there, Van der Laan said. It means that someone could get a call from a bank if they transfer money to their parents in Turkey, for example, to help fund a renovation. “And then there doesn’t have to be anything wrong. But as a bank, you still have to check.”