I'm not an expat in Hong Kong nor do I live in Hong Kong - I'm from Hong Kong, but posting here because I don't really know where else to do this.
I have a mostly dormant (3 years) Standard Chartered Bank account with quite honestly very little money in Hong Kong, and I have been their client for more than a decade.
Suddenly, I received an email asking me to do an "account review", with the email saying financial institutes are legally required to do that.
The form not only asks for personal information and immigration information outside of Hong Kong (I trust that the Hong Kong Empire doesn't extend to the other side of the world), and in fact also asked for my *lifetime* earnings from *all* sources.
Does anyone know if they are really legally entitled to know your earnings even when you don't live in Hong Kong, none of those money has ever even entered Hong Kong, and Hong Kong doesn't tax its citizens for their earnings overseas? I mean, that doesn't even strike me as something the Hong Kong government is entitled to know, let alone a random bank.
I demanded to be presented with the relevant legislation and not only did they never respond to the request, they are threatening to suspend my account (which isn't really a big deal since I don't actually use it) if I don't do the form. I couldn't even get a response from that so-called Customer Due Diligence Specialist until I yelled at the audio chat person online and emailed both the specialist and the bank again, asking them to stop threatening me or I'll sue after cancelling my account.
I'm also puzzled by the assumption that I could even provide such a piece of information. The little money I have in their bank account consists of money I made years and years ago from irregular part-time gigs, as well as allowances from parents. I guess some of them might have been the red packet money from Lunar New Year too! Like, how am I supposed to be able to declare anything??