Post-prison bank accounts: Westpac to help newly released
Released prisoners are struggling to open bank accounts, and during lockdown things got so bad some were being released with $350 preloaded Westpac debit cards instead.
Rachel Ngatai from prisoner release support service Pars said a bank account was essential for people trying to reintegrate into society, but banks routinely shut people’s bank accounts when they went into prison.
On leaving prison many people lacked formal identification documents, and a permanent address, effectively barring them from getting an account.
Westpac chief executive David McLean hoped a pilot project between Westpac and the Department of Corrections would change that. He said he first became aware of the issue two years ago when he saw newlyreleased prisoners cashing release cheques because they couldn’t open accounts.
‘‘I became aware of this issue standing in one of our branches and watching these guys come in on their release. Clean T-shirt, and jeans, and they had been given a cheque for something like $250, and a bus ticket to Auckland.’’
They were government cheques issued by Westpac, the government’s banker.
‘‘They didn’t have bank accounts, so they had to cash the cheques,’’ he said. ‘‘They’ve done their time and here we are saying to them, here’s your cheque, good luck, get on with your life. It’s really impossible to imagine how you could function properly in society these days without a bank account.’’
The problem was strict antimoney laundering laws prevented banks from opening accounts for people who could not prove their identities, he said.
‘‘To open a bank account now, you basically need a driver’s licence or a passport, and many prisoners would not have those, and you need to have something like a utility bill to your residential address, and by definition, they don’t have that,’’ McLean said.
But Corrections could verify the identity of prisoners being released, and provide them with identification documents acceptable to the banks, he said.
So far, the pilot scheme had allowed 110 prisoners to get accounts using them, McLean said.
Not every prisoner would get an account, however, and to date, 14 prisoners who went through the pilot had been turned down. Anyone who had been violent or aggressive to Westpac staff would not get an account, McLean said.
But banks would also make decisions on whether people posed a high risk of using their bank accounts for illegal purposes, including those who had been imprisoned for money-laundering, or paedophile offences.