Natwest Business Profile Review; A Total Balls Up

[plasticpig]

Anyone else going through this process? We have been given conflicting information about the actual process of having ID verified by a Natwest branch.

We were told by the call center last week that we could go into any branch and get a staff member to sign a copy of the ID along with their name the branch name and their ISV No. (staff number). We could then upload this using the business profile website.

I went in to a branch on Saturday and was told that they couldn't do this and they would take a copy of my ID and add the relevant staff details and fax it to the processing center (the call center is closed on a Saturday so I couldn't confirm this) as GDPR rules prevented them from giving me the staff number. So I let them take copies of my ID and they said they would fax it off.

We rang the call center this morning to confirm what I was told at the branch and have been told they don't have a fax number! and the branch needs to post the information to the processing center (via royal mail and no their internal mail system).

If we don't get this done before Christmas Natwest say the will freeze our account. We have had three sets of conflicting information about what we are supposed to do.

[NorthDave]

Can you open another business account and transfer a slush fund over if not the whole business?

This kind of thing could cause you real issues so get a contingency sorted asap.

Sorry I can't help with the actual process. I am pleased to say we binned NatWest a good few years ago.

[Frimley111R]

Go to another bank, open a new account, transfer everything. It'll probably be quicker and easier. We use Natwest (not my choice) and the seem to be like most large organisations, once you fall outside their basic processes (or even if you don't) it all falls down!

[hellorent]

Just had the misfortune to go through this process with natwest, what a load of w*****s, If anyone is thinking of using natwest
look at their trustpilot reviews.

[springfan62]

Been working on mine for nearly 2 years now, they take ages to review everything then they demand more information within 30 days or they will block the account.

Communication with them is a challenge too.

[vikingaero]

I have NatWest Bank accounts for our family commercial property business and we've had to go through this just before Christmas. The letters explicitly say that the accounts would be frozen if details weren't provided. I filled in the information. It asked us what business we were in - so I put in the industry code for commercial property rental. Then it asked the code for the businesses we rented out - mainly restaurants and takeaways. All fine. Then 2 days before the deadline they got back to us saying the accounts were frozen due to us not providing all the necessary information. I called them up and they said the industry codes for the businesses were incorrect as we cannot rent out restaurants and takeaways.

So rather than arguing with the Indian call centre handling this, I emailed them. By this time the deadline of 31/12 had passed and technically our accounts were frozen. Except they weren't. I carried on receiving rent, paying insurances, surveys etc and I was still able to pay dividends from the blocked accounts.

Then a month later the NatWest dept dealing with this sent a letter saying the matter was approved and our not blocked account was unblocked.

Then last week we received the same crap for our WorldPay account... The account was helpful in the past before bank transfers were less common and allowed us to receive money. As it has zero balance I asked for it to be closed.