I’ve complained many times about the pointless nature of anti–money laundering laws. They impose very high costs and force banks to spy on their customers, but they are utterly ineffective as a weapon against criminal activity. Yet politicians and bureaucrats keep making a bad system worse, and the latest development is a silly scheme to ban $100 bills!
It also seems that poor people are the main victims of these expensive and intrusive laws. According to a new World Bank study, half of all adults do not have a bank account, with 18 percent of those people (click on the chart below for more info) citing documentation requirements—generally imposed as part of anti–money laundering rules—as a reason for being unable to participate in the financial system.
But this understates the impact on the poor. Of those without bank accounts, 25 percent said cost was a factor, as seen in the chart below. One of the reasons that costs are high is that banks incur regulatory expenses for every customer, in large part because of anti–money laundering requirements, and then pass those costs on to consumers.