A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

The KYC/AML dance is really annoying. The actual bad guys know exactly what they need to pass all the checks, while regular people, as in this case, often get caught in the wheels. Banks or fintechs rarely have the kind of investigative powers they would need to actually find the criminals using them, nor do they really want to spend their time playing police. So anything even remotely suspicious? You're now out of our risk appetite, bye.

For the actual criminals - if you're already doing crime, what's a little document forgery on top of that?

It's about time we accepted this fact and allowed money transfers, payments and banking to be neutral infrastructure.

Only slightly related, but it gave me a laugh--

Wise needed beneficial ownership documentation for my business account. Presumably this was part of the whole KYC/AML/etc dance.

There's no standard form I could find for this, document to get out of the government service portal, or anything else. I finally just fired up a word processor and put together a single page document:

    To whom in may concern,
    
    Below is an accounting of all individuals who, directly or indirectly,
    through any contract, arrangement, understanding or otherwise own equity
    interests in 12341234 CANADA LTD.
    
    NAME             DOB              Ownership
    nucleardog       1970-01-01       100%
    
    I hereby certify that the above information is correct as of Dec 31, 2037.
    
    Nucleardog
    President
    12341234 CANADA LTD

No notes. They accepted it immediately and the account opening moved forward. Like... wat? Why was I stressed about this?

(I have since written myself many things things like this, e.g., salary verification letters. Always gives me a chuckle and feels like a weird superpower I've gained by paying the $250 or whatever to incorporate.)

If I were someone that set up forged accounts and stuff professionally this would've been absolutely _nothing_ to bypass. As someone legit doing this _once_ for _a_ business, it definitely took a lot more research and thought that it really should have.