How many of you do or do not require that a customer furnish a purpose for their outgoing wires?

We are considering requiring a purpose for a wire on our wire request form. Personally, I'd like to see it on all wires, but I know I'll get pushback on that. So I'm focusing right now on requiring a wire purpose on wires sent from consumer accounts, in an attempt to stop wires sent as a result of romance scams, etc. We are seeing more of those. My intent is for the wire purpose to be a starting point for more questions to be asked, if the purpose does not quite make sense for the situation. I've also heard it can help the receiving FI if they are suspecting their customer is being used as a mule to have a wire purpose listed.

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

The wire transfer processor that we use actually does require a reason for any international wire transfers that we submit. So, we require it on all of our wire requests- including domestic wires. Do we always receive a forthright response- no, but I find it very helpful for the purposes you've stated above, as well as for the overall analysis of an account.

All domestic wires $3,000 or more.
All international wires.
It doesn't travel with the wire instructions, but it goes on the wire form we keep internally.

At previous banks I included the purpose on wire order forms. Now I work for a much larger bank and I was not involved in the creation of the form. I recently requested that the purpose be added as we spend too much time trying to find out the purpose when we are clearing alerts.

I recognize that we won't always get a good response from the customer, but that is a training issue that can be dealt with. All wires need to be approved, so the approving officer will be held responsible for forms that indicate a vague response.

We do what IronP2717 does. $3,000 on domestic wires and all international wires. We collect it on lower thresholds as well but don't require it.

We require it on all outgoing wires. I am not aware of any pushback from customers. It helps to catch possible fraud and to help clear alerts.

We do not currently require a purpose, but we are looking at changing that.

To add to Susan1432's question...

For those that require a purpose: Would you be willing to share your procedure for handling a member that refuses to provide that information? What is your procedure (if you don't mind sharing) when the customer service rep believes that the wire might be scam related (e.g., they notify a supervisor/manager to talk with the member, they have a list of questions that they have been trained on to further inquire with the member, and/or they provide the member with a handout that discusses the different scams to help educate the member)?

If we make the change to add the purpose, which I believe we will, I would like to provide procedures and training material on how to handle the wire situations that are likely scam related.

Thank you!

I know what I would do on the first question. No purpose = no wire.

I agree. No purpose, no wire. If customer service rep believes there is a scam, the wire is escalated to our Compliance/BSA area for final determination whether a wire is sent or not.

no purpose no wire as well...if we suspect fraud or scam it gets escalated to our corporate investigation team

We do what Iron does too. $3000 domestic and all international. I tried to lower it because we see romance scams at $500, which we usually catch and refuse. But I've gotten so much push back from upper management, than I left it alone because it's a reasonable threshold. Our wire activity is also minimal. We send less than 1 a day.