I've been working on my startup for 3 years and have been with the same bank (large publicly bank in the US) through the past 3 years. Yesterday morning, I received a notification from my credit card company and a couple 3rd party vendors that my payments weren't going through. I have a "platinum business banker" assigned to me, who while usually responsive, wasn't picking up any of my calls. After enough calling and getting transferred to different departments, I find out that my account is frozen because they need to "verify my identity." So I spend the first half of the day calling branches, eventually signing some document affirming my ownership percentage of the company (vast majority owner), and then keep getting put on hold by different representatives. Finally, I go into a local branch and explain what's happening, and the bankers there try to do what they can but get put on hold as well. My finance team in a different state spent 4 hours on hold, I spent 1.5 hours on hold until the call dropped (and then of course, the KYC department that I needed to be transferred to was closed), and the banker I was with spent 2.5 hours on hold through their "internal" line. No one was able to get in touch with anyone from that department. I had to run payroll yesterday.Luckily, I had created a bank account with a smaller (regional in multiple states but not national) bank a few months ago, and had debated transferring all assets to them anyway. I was absolutely livid at having a ton of working capital locked up, but I was mostly worried about my employees not getting paid this morning. Right before 5pm EST, I made a loan from a sister company to this new bank account and linked the account with Gusto. I made payroll today, and it wouldn't have happened if that account hadn't been set up already.Tl;dr: Big bank froze money, can't access for bureaucratic reasons, diversity in bank accounts good. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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