My favorite day of the month is bank statement day at my company | Hacker News Reader

My favorite day of the month is bank statement day at my company

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199 pointsylhert107 comments

Silicon Valley Bank is a bank that happens to be in Silicon Valley. It's a "Valleyesque" outlier in terms of bank policy — they are terrific at working with startups in unusual situations. (Your average bank equates "unusual situation" to "just hang up the phone".) But their technology isn't like the Tesla of banking or anything. Though they did buy Standard Treasury, so perhaps that'll be an interesting direction.

absolutely. First Republic and SVB are the only two banks that know how to work with startups. The more mainstream banks really don't understand the challenges of being a startup. They'll ask for things like your businesses tax return from the previous year when you try to open an account... and then get confused at what to do when you explain to them that you have only existed for 2 weeks.

Calling BS on this. I've started several companies and opened Wells Fargo accounts for all of them within days of incorporation. Now, if you are talking about _borrowing_ money from the bank I think it makes sense to have to show some businesses financial history. Simply to open an account : in my experience all you need is the relevant incorporation paperwork and some money.

A while back, I had a major bank in Australia act completely puzzled that I might want a credit/debit card for my 10 year old web business. They appeared to have no offering and couldn't comprehend my need. I was trying to explain that I used it to pay for online services like hosting, domain registration and the like. It was like I was speaking a foreign language.

The only option they mentioned involved keeping thousands of dollars essentially in escrow. The bills I was needing to pay were easily less than that each year, let alone monthly as I paid.

Hearing banks confused by remotely atypical businesses no longer surprises me.

I can only speak to my experience and those of my friends who have started companies. This is the kind of experience we had

I realise theres a proclivity to be anal here but there's a lot of companies incorporated in the US every day and generally one of the first thing every business does is open a bank account. I'm not saying what you said isn't true, but I sincerely doubt it's representative. Borrowing, I agree is a different matter.

It's quite interesting in Poland, where you formally have to have a company bank account in order to register a company and banks refuse to open one for you unless you give them your company registration numbers (which you get after registration). So basically, you have to lie.

What did you have to lie about?

Did you lie about the company registration number to the bank? If so, how did it happen to match the one you were eventually assigned?

Or did you lie about the bank account number when registering the company? How did you guess the one the bank eventually was going to assign to you?

> They'll ask for things like your businesses tax return from the previous year when you try to open an account.

This seems far-fetched... I walked into my Credit Union with my corp documentation and left with checking & savings accounts in less than 45 minutes. It was painless.

> They'll ask for things like your businesses tax return from the previous year when you try to open an account

What? I've done this in a few hours, both in Colorado and Ontario. Go online, register, print out registration, go to bank, open account.

Or is this a different kind of account or something?

If all you are doing is opening an account then your registration docs alone are enough. There has to be more to this.

Paperless billing isn't really high technology. They're already sending an e-statement, so I'm not sure what would be keeping them offering to have that be the only option.

I'm guessing there's a legal component involved, somehow.

In Australia that's the case - paper statements are mandated, and if you want a paperless statement there's a bunch of stuff banks have to do including formally recording your preference to have paperless statements and sending a letter once a year or so to notify you of your recorded preference.

It used to be, but hasn't been for years. Banks slowly switched from paper statements, to summary statements to now you can have entirely electronic statements. I get no physical bank statements from any of the banks I use (CBA, Suncorp, ING & BoQ).

I've never gotten a physical letter from CommBank. Is this a state-based thing?

The confirmation letter was a few years ago so it may have been updated.

The legislation was focused on 'debt' based notifications - e.g. the way the existing laws were written, a paper-based notification was the legally recognised way to notify someone of their debt obligations (i.e. credit card statement)

All of my credit card statements are paperless. I 2 different financial insttitutions. Ditto my bank statements from one of those two.

The only paper statmeents I receive are for my mortgage account and its associated (empty) savings account. I suspect that's because until recently the credit union they're with was behind the times.

Ah, okay. I don't have a credit card, I thought you were reffering to paper bank statements not credit card bills. :P

It's likely a business versus a personal account thing. I use the same (Australian) bank for my business and personal accounts, and while I can go completely paperless for my personal account, according to the bank, for various legal reasons I can't do the same for my business account.

There's no legal requirement to send a statement exactly, the bank can't force the customer to eStatements, but they can choose not to keep the account open if they opt out. There's additional complexity around if it's a debit account vs credit account. But usually what happens is the system the bank bought to run their core is setup one way and hasn't been switched for a long long time.

> Silicon Valley Bank gives us no paperless billing option for our account

I find that absurd. A bank that primarily serves the tech industry doesn't have paperless statements. My banks, all of which are the very definition of entrenched corporations, offer paperless statements.

Silicon Valley Bank exists based on understanding startups, more than being one. Startups can survive with antiquated banking systems. (If anything it gives them ideas!) Startups can't survive with an antiquated banking mindset.

They funny thing it is not that they dont have e-statements it is that they dont allow you to opt out of the paper statement. Any other bank would force you to paperless only the first time they saw the bill for shipping you an giant box with a thousand page statement

But they're disrupting the paperless statements industry! /s

Cost of one box of ridiculous statement per month: $41

Cost of a team of developers, a team of QA, and security penetration testers for replacement: >>> $41

Break it down that way, and it's easy to see how it's not a priority. Likewise, in the article they talk about a 30-min download. So what if a snowflake customer has a slow download - fixing that is much more expensive, and as it currently stands, things are working.

My company is with SVB because we couldn't find a good alternative that had decent rates for international transfers (US 100% remote company, international founders).

Open to suggestions...

How about a combination of any other US bank + Transferwise? This is what I do (using Bank of America in the US). The transfers to Transferwise go through their US account (thus can be done as a no- or low-cost ACH) and the rates by Transferwise are pretty close to market rate.

Word of warning: I used to love Transferwise, but they completely shut down a good friend of mine's account and froze his funds, stranding him in Europe without any money. They flagged his account, saying he was selling illicit substances and being paid through his Transferwise account, which is completely absurd. If you knew this guy... Anyway, it took him weeks to get the money released, and even then most of it was not deposited into his account, but instead sent back to the senders (his family). Minus fees, of course. Which, granted, aren't very much. :P

Considered it, then SVB came back with a better offer. "Other banks" not being that attractive or much better than SVB in the first place, either, and having to deal with two systems rather than just one.

Wish there was something like Simple / N26 for businesses.

Simple seems great, but its daily/monthly transfer limits are really scary. I'm not in the habit of wanting to exceed them, but I can think of some one-off events where you might want to (restructure your investments, do something with your bonus, buy a car, buy a house, etc) and the idea that you straight-up can't should give anyone pause.

Where are you getting this 'straight up can't' from? You can just call them and they will temporarily raise it for you.

And, when/if they say no?

That's pretty much the state of banking in the US, already.

Currencyfair.com is pretty awesome. It's not a bank but you can keep money in it and send international transfers. It's basically a p2p currency exchange company.

> E-statement takes 30+ minutes to download because it’s huge and their servers are really slow!

They're lucky that they're able to download after all.

Some years ago I used an AmEx to order 1000+ items every day on Amazon, which after a while locked me out of the account pages of both companies. Most probably some database query in the background was timing out due to the volume of transactions.

To add insult to injury, I remember it was almost impossible to explain the issue to the support staff on either side. They kept on getting back with canned responses about what browser I was using etc.

> I remember it was almost impossible to explain the issue to the support staff on either side

Yeah, is there some kind of standard escape sequence to use in these circumstances? Like "I must speak to the manager" or some analog without sounding mean? I know these folks are incentivized to not escalate, but...

Business-to-business relationships often include account managers and/or dedicated "partner" support lines.

These channels are less scripted, more inclined to believe that the caller is a professional in the field who knows what they're talking about, and will actually admit something is defective / mediate interaction between the customer and actual engineers to work on a fix.

You don't get that as a consumer, though. You get it as an "account" with significant LTV, an authorized reseller, etc.

Yes. Go straight to the top. It's typically easy to find out who the CEO is. Next, determine the email format that they use. Email the CEO with your issue (extremely concise, problem/resolution first, backstory later -- these are busy people!). Include a phone number. Get resolution within days.

Sometimes "I write software and I have a pretty good idea what's going on, could I talk to your tech support people please" works. Sometimes.

the escape sequence is to anticipate all the questions they're going to ask you and answer them in the first correspondence. try two different browsers, try it in incognito, etc. If you can prove you've isolated the problem, you get to skip the back-and-forth required to isolate the problem.

And actually do all that stuff, don't just pretend you did so you can cheat at customer service. because maybe it is just your browser, and if you insist it isn't they're just going to hang up on you and you're going to deserve it.

I wish this worked... It does occasionally, but I stopped even trying these days.

My online chats with support usually go something like this "Hi, I'm trying to do X, but get error Y. It doesn't depend on A, B, C. Tried your FAQ Z already. Can you fix or do X for me, please?"; "Hi, this is Bob, how can I help you today?"; "<repeat>"; "Have you tried doing Z as described in the FAQ?"

It's so annoying/insulting when they give you a box to summarise your whole issue, but nobody cares to read what you put there.

I've found calling people to make the given solution succeed at a much higher rate than chat boxes, unfortunately.

The only company this has worked with for me is Apple tech support. I had a duff hard drive. They told me "Well we see you've already tried the things I would have suggested to get you booting again, so let's just arrange for it to be serviced".

I try every time with Amazon and while their tech support is excellent (usually they'll bend over backwards to make you happy), sometimes it feels like you're speaking to a five year old. I've had situations where they just don't get it, or they couldn't modify an order (I ordered something Prime, accidentally clicked express and wanted to change it back to free delivery: this was apparently impossible for them). In the end I just said yes to them, cancelled the order myself and redid it the way I wanted.

Shibboleet

Context: https://xkcd.com/806/

Knowing banks/financial institutions that monthly statement is definitely generate by a batch job and isn't recreated on the fly each time you request it.

US banks seem so backwards in so many ways as an outside observer. Transferring money between accounts of different banks, the prevalence of contactless payments, digital communications as standard, even the fact that cheques still exist.

This is all stuff we take for granted in Aus and it just blows my mind each and every time it comes up that US banks are so behind the times.

I worked on a project migrating a telco to a new billing system. Somehow the new system churned out, for only one guy, 144 copies of his bill. No idea how a gross became a thing in a computer, but it did.

The mailhouse, rather than do the sensible thing and call us to see why, did optimise the delivery and collect all the copies together and post in a single box. Crazy.

And its called "Silicon Valley Bank" on top of that. You would think they would be the first to adopt tech, not the last. Do banks still have any legal reasons to not allow paperless statements ?

>Do banks still have any legal reasons to not allow paperless statements ?

The more procedures and services offered means a much greater scope for compliance issues. Running a financial institution means having to put a lot of manpower into regulatory compliance.

Ye olde <hand-waving> "compliance". There's no need to go without paperless statements. If it's written in law then the law should be fixed.

For those who don't know, Silicon Valley Bank provides merchant banking services for a pretty big fraction of Bay Area start-ups. They have a reputation for "getting it," in terms of being able to support venture-backed pre-revenue companies. This does make the giant paper statement even more ironic.

Correct, in fact there is probably no one better for a startup's first bank account (it was my first startup's bank account)! But be careful, if your transaction volume gets too high you might need to invest in a sizable mailbox ;)

I was not aware that SVB has a merchant banking business. Do you have a reference for that? I worked in a similar business at a different bank so I know they can be a little secretive about things of that nature.

Check the comment on the article:

    Recommended by Yan Lhert (author)
    Go to the profile of Silicon Valley Bank
    Silicon Valley Bank
    5 hrs ago
    Got it. We’re looking into it.

That's the dumbest thing I've seen in a very long time.

Also, if it's costing the bank $41 per month this must surely be getting passed on to OP somehow - they can't be making a loss on his account? I wonder what OP pays the bank?

From the blog post: "We do hundreds of thousands of searches with the DMV every month, who charge us a fee by credit card for each transaction"

$41/100,000 credit card transactions = 0.041 cents/transaction. So as long as the fees per transaction to the DMV are higher than that they're still ahead

Still crazy - I'd accept a reduction in my bank fee in return for them not posting a tree out to me once a month.

How about just having your company use a non-SVB credit card (or debit card) and just pay off the bill via the SVB account? Have you tried calling up SVB and resolving it with them directly?

but then I wouldn't get my monthly laughs in!

"We do hundreds of thousands of searches with the DMV every month, who charge us a fee by credit card for each transaction, and gives us no other payment method"

This is retarded. DMV should offer a one-off monthly subscription for unlimited searches, or just save each search and produce a bill at the end of the month. I'm sure banks are making an absolute killing on those searches.

"Silicon Valley Bank gives us no paperless billing option for our account"

Is this 2016? Or 1970?

30 minutes to download the bank statement? No paperless billing?

so many questions about this amazing bank.

my guess: somewhere lurks an AS/400

> my guess: somewhere lurks an AS/400

Not a bad guess. Of course, they're flawlessly receiving their statement, every month, without fail — so my guess is that somewhere lurks an AS/400.

"Silicon Valley Bank gives us no paperless billing option for our account"

... sigh

It's all about scale.

Do things that don't scale!

.. like shipping paper bank statements..

Seems to me like shipping paper bank statements scales quite well -- linearly in fact!

It'll scale just fine until the bank statement needs a truck-level loading dock, pallet and forklift.

Can't wait to do a follow up post from the back of the box truck :D

Obviously - something needs to weigh the box so that they can apply correct postage...

By far the best response but in case my statement wasn't clear (for anyone that actually cares) the issue is that an online billing system costs roughly the same amount whether you're a tiny local bank or Citibank so even though it's "Silicon Valley" bank it's far too expensive for them to build out sophisticated systems. You need to be huge to have these fancy features to amortize their cost across more users.

I'm suddenly nostalgic for the annoying buzz of dot matrix printers.

Ah it's not a buzz. It's a loud impacting sound.

Thanks Epson.

US banks (and consumers) are stuck in the stone age. Paper cheques, magnetic swipe cards, it's pretty bad.

In France, you can only pay certain government filing fees (driver's license for instance) by using "fiscal stamps" which are postage-type stamps only available at certain retail outlets. They won't accept cash, check, or credit card, only stamps.

Same in the UK, I was exchanging my EU licence for a UK one, and the only way to pay for it was to either include a cheque(I have literally never seen a cheque, I asked my bank how to get a cheque book and I would have to wait 3 weeks for one so I said no) or go to the post office and buy a "postal order" for the same amount and send it to DVLA. Most other things you can pay for using a debit card though.

The GDS/GOV.UK are at least trying to change that

You should have asked for a check!

Millions of dollars a month in DMV records searches, that's the more interesting part to me. Background checks? Carfax but for the past owners of the car?

Author's employer, Checkr [0], "provides modern and compliant background checks for global enterprises and startups".

[0]: https://checkr.com

There's only a few million drivers in PA. Soon they'll have queried them all.

True, although the fact that one validated a driver's license last month does not mean that the license is valid this month.

But like file permissions, just querying the filesystem (or drivers liceense database) the result is potentially invalid by the time you actually get it. You ultimately have to actually use the filepath or drivers license and let any failure be the truth.

My favorite part is that the transactions are printed single-column. Look at all that white space.

from the animated-gif it seems like the back sides are blank as well. Just think of how much cheaper it would be to ship that statement with the proper small condensed monospaced font, multi-column, and and double sided. Welcome to the 1990s SVB!

yep! it's single sided. the box is also filled/packed with the side tearoff stuff (not sure the name for it) which you can sort of see in the gif. Must have been terrible to have to rip it all off for this many pages!

Perf strips! That's what we called them anyway.

Brings back fond memories...

The strangest part of the story to me is that the state charges for each search individually. PA.gov appears to require the creation of an account, so they could save themselves a big chunk of money by charging the customer once a month. I was formerly employed at a portal similar to PA.gov in another state, and this is exactly what we did. I can't think of any good reason to charge by the drink, so it's probably some well-meaning but boneheaded state reg.

Relevant: https://priceonomics.com/what-startups-think-about-silicon-v...

Personally I've been very happy with Capital One business banking for my startup. One time painless in-person setup at a branch, everything done online ever since, paperless from the start, free checking, savings, and business credit cards for everyone. 1% APY on our balance.

Capital One business banking has a caveat of having no shared database between branches and some other twilight zone interpretations of compliance regulations.

Every time I needed to do something in person, it HAD to be at the Capital One I originally opened the account at.

What happens if they ever close that branch?

You can open an operational credit card account at a traditional bank outside of SVB and keep your primary banking relationship with them. I would expect American Express will give you the month-to-month cash flow and paperless billing while SVB can give you the larger line of credit and growth capital. Plus, think of all those credit card points.

100% agree. We put most of our business transactions on Amex. You can buy some significantly cool items and/or experiences when you generate hundreds of thousands of points per year! I am surprised the OP is not already doing this.

DMV might not support Amex. Amex has a lot higher fees so many places don't support it.

We use SVB and luckily don't have this many transactions :)

We once had a Bell Atlantic (that's Verizon now) phone bill delivered that took 1/3 of a UPS truck. 600 line hunt group that they broke so that instead of being a hunt group, it was don't-answer-call-forward from the 1st to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, and on up. At a cost of $.08 per hunt. So if lines 1-599 were busy that'd be 599 $.08 charges. For each accepted call to our modems. And each charge itemized one per page. On little index card sized phone bill pages. Mid month they called and asked if we could take our bills on reel-reel tapes, which I guess should have been an early warning sign...

So anyway, thus was the 400,000-ish printed page phone bill.

Off-topic: What are they doing that requires "hundreds of thousands of searches with the DMV" every month?

DMV appointments as a service

Background checks.

Which banks do provide paperless billing for business accounts, and what specific policy reason -- compliance? Record keeping? -- prevents SVB from doing it?

You know, the people responsible for printing and shipping? The expense/hassle is not lost on them. I'm curious to know more.

Before I moved to Seattle, my old three-branch credit union in Podunk County, Flyover State had paperless statements, and that was years and years ago. "Silicon Valley Bank", in 2016, doesn't?

Did you check that the statement is correct? Feels like someone is bound to drop a piece of paper or ten when refilling the printer. You can probably even do it by weight, 1g ~= $10-100.

Reminds me of when I look at my cell phone bill and see nearly every transferred KB itemized. At least it's paperless.

Early iPhone bills (from AT&T) frequently ran to hundreds of pages for heavy users, sparking at least one viral video:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill

it seems to me that taking time out of your day to put down some one who is a partner to your business would be better spent making your business better

SVB is a great bank and I don't mean to say anything too negative but it doesn't mean that they don't do some silly things sometimes. It gives me a laugh that they do this so I thought I'd share. I hope my tone was "friendly poking fun" and not "putting someone down". The startup I founded used SVB and I had a great relationship with them.

The DMV on the other hand....

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