Woeful operational incompetence & disintegrated IT system for a simple FICA verification

Standard Bank's FICA verification IT systems need urgent reintegration and proper maintenance to provide seamless service and obviate customer dissatisfaction. Having received Standard Bank's request for submission of FICA documentation for verification on 11 March 2025, I physically visited Bank's main branch at Brandwag, Bloemfontein (173 Nelson Mandela Dr, Westdene, BFN) frustratingly waited for 2 hours owing to system slowdown, before being assisted by a petulant consultant, who verified the submitted documentation (which includes SA ID, proof of residence and source of fund--a recent payslip) and subsequently approved by her supervisor--who wrote a note in the Bank's system confirming my compliance with FICA requirement.

Astonishingly, without any notification (via email or SMS), my 3 accounts were frozen after just 2 weeks with a level 2 FICA restriction, implying that the hand-submitted verified FICA documentation is missing from the Bank's system.

Annoyingly, I went to the Bank's Bloemfontein's Brandwag branch again (on 3rd April 2025), waited for about 45 minutes and physically re-submitted the required FICA documentation to another consultant which was verified, accepted and approved by her supervisor--again with a note in the Bank's system that I'm FICA compliant. The accounts that were supposed to be unfrozen immediately for transaction purposes remain inactive after 2 days.

This prompted me to phone the Bank's Customer care, wait for almost an hour (wasting airtime due to heavy phone calls) before an online consultant was able to assist me by searching for the submitted FICA documentation. This telephonic process took almost 2 hours...imagine the non-refundable time, and airtime (financial) costs incurred just to complete a simple 10-minute FICA verification process.

By now, I thought my visit to the Standard Bank's branch was over, until yesternight (02 June 2025) when I couldn't transfer funds to my 32-day Savings account via the App and I found my Credit Card's statement missing. As suspected, I phoned the customer care around 9:30 am today (03 June 2025), and guess what...my accounts have been frozen again due to level 2 FICA restriction!!! To my chagrin, the submitted FICA documents in May and April have gone missing from the Bank's lousy, flimsy and disintegrated IT system...what a headache!!! Of course, the usual procedure applies...please visit your nearest Standard Bank branch to submit the required FICA documents. Now, I must visit a branch and resubmit FICA documentation for the THIRD TIME!!!

The public embarrassment and shame would be unbearable had I have gone to a till (or cashier pay point) for payment after making a purchase, only to discovered that I’m unable to pay (because of insufficient funds or noncompliance to submit FICA documents) owing to frozen accounts solely caused by Standard Bank’s operational incompetence and lousily disintegrated IT system!!!

At this point, after being a Standard Bank client for almost 20 years, I’m highly disappointed and terribly frustrated that a simple FICA verification process cannot be executed by a big Bank like Standard Bank. Responsible bank executive(s) need to wake up ASAP and fix these recurrent (annual) woeful operational and IT problems.