Identity Theft bank account creation

On 02 July I received a text message from Nedbank informing me a bank account was created using my ID. I am not a Nedbank client. I went to the closest branch which was Nedbank at Cresta. The staff there couldn't even identify if the message was a valid Nedbank text, they couldn't contact the ***** department for me and shockingly Nedbank does not have phones in their branches to contact other internal departments directly. I had to phone their ***** department directly from the branch. They confirmed an account was in fact created using my ID and I had to provide them with the instruction to block the account.

Nedbank allowed for the bank account to created without FIRST verifying the account holders details. This is shocking. The account was approved and created and THEN ONLY was I informed. Nedbank has zero compliance processes in place to ensure data validation or information security.

I now have the unnecessary stress of reporting it to the police and getting an affidavit drawn up for identity theft and managing it with SAFPS. Nedbank should be held responsible for the lack in compliance and to support victims of ID theft by supporting with the affidavits and reporting to Police.

If I could give a zero star rating for Nedbank I would.