All coincidences are not accidental: banks will have a new reason to block accounts.
Rosfinmonitoring has proposed to introduce a new basis for blocking citizens' accounts — a partial coincidence of customer data with information about the person whose funds should be frozen. Banking systems will respond to your full name and date of birth. This is how the authorities want to close the loophole for intruders. However, the new measures may lead to a surge in account locks of Russians by 15-25%, experts polled by "Izvestia" believe. Moreover, the risk of errors will also increase. How to turn on the mechanism to avoid mass frosts, and what to do with Smirnov, Ivanov and Kuznetsov — in the "Izvestia" material.
What new grounds will there be for freezing accounts
The authorities are preparing to set new criteria for blocking Russian accounts. A separate reason will be the partial coincidence of the client's data with information about the person in respect of whom the funds freeze should be applied. Rosfinmonitoring will determine the signs for checking by banks, follows from the amendments to the law on countering money laundering and financing of terrorism ("Izvestia" has it).
If the data is similar, the client's operations will be stopped for five business days. Then, if no decision is made to extend the restrictions, access to the money will be restored.
Currently, banks are required to block customer accounts from the Rosfinmonitoring lists. The list includes people involved in extremist or terrorist activities. Their funds are frozen within a day after the name appears on the list. There are more than 15 thousand people there.
The new rules are designed to limit the possibilities for circumventing these restrictions, according to the explanatory note. Sometimes they try to do this using different spellings of the first and last names. As of February 1, 2026, more than 800 people from the Rosfinmonitoring list had several options for recording their data at once. Currently, the partial coincidence of information from bank customers is not specified separately in the law as a sign for the need to block funds.
Banks can also freeze accounts for those customers who are not on the Rosfinmonitoring list. To identify suspicious transactions, the Central Bank had previously identified additional signs. Among them are unusual transfers for the client in terms of amount or frequency, the presence of the recipient's details in the database of the Bank of Russia on fraudulent transactions, as well as a large number of counterparties in a short period.
The public discussion of the initiative will end on September 24. The amendments will enter into force 270 days after the publication of the law. "Izvestia" sent a request to Rosfinmonitoring and the Central Bank with a request to comment on how the new requirements may affect bona fide customers.
The criteria will be developed based on an analysis of cases that arise in practice, deputy Anatoly Aksakov told "Izvestia". He added that most often we are talking about different spellings of full names related to transliteration. Anatoly Aksakov also noted that the difference between the client's data and the information from the lists should be minimal.
Will the number of blocked accounts increase
After the introduction of the new Rosfinmonitoring criterion, the number of account locks is likely to increase, said Arthur Leer, President of the Association of Exporters and Importers, managing partner of the law firm "Lex Alliance" law firm. In his opinion, the growth will be at least 20%. At the same time, according to financial expert Alexei Krichevsky, the number of blockages may even increase by one and a half times.
With the new criteria, the risk of errors and temporary inconveniences for conscientious citizens and businesses will immediately increase, noted Artur Leer. Ekaterina Kosareva, Managing Partner of "VMT Consult" agency, agreed with this. In her opinion, most of the freezes will be caused by mistakes. In 90-95% of cases, banks' AML systems are triggered incorrectly, as they are guided by formal signs.
Therefore, immediately after the introduction of new measures, the number of account locks of Russians will increase by 15-25% (or about 80 thousand cases), Ekaterina Kosareva believes. Freedom Global analyst Vladimir Chernov expects a similar increase in the first month after the introduction of the new rules. However, then the indicator should decrease as banking systems are set up and false alarms are eliminated, the expert predicts.
In general, the purpose of the innovation is clear — to prevent situations when intruders hide under false names, slightly changing their data (for example, one letter in the surname or date of birth), explained "Finama" analyst Igor Dodonov. Changes in legislation are also related to the implementation of FATF recommendations to protect the financial system from money laundering and terrorist financing.
However, the measure may create inconvenience for conscientious citizens, because there is currently no fully-fledged working mechanism for quick defrosting of funds, Arthur Leer believes. People still face such difficulties in different banks. "Izvestia" sent a request to the Association of Banks of Russia.
After launching the new system parameters, credit institutions will respond to formal matches of first name, last name and date of birth, Ekaterina Kosareva clarified. In her opinion, bearers of common names and surnames should be especially attentive.
According to large—scale linguistic and demographic studies for 2026, the most common surname in Russia is Smirnov. The top 10 also includes: Ivanov, Kuznetsov, Popov, Sokolov, Lebedev, Kozlov, Novikov, Morozov and Petrov.
Most likely, the lion's share of false positives will fall on the owners of such surnames. And that's thousands of unjustified blockages per month.
Nevertheless, there are not many complete namesakes by last name, first name and patronymic — less than 1%, said the financial adviser and founder of Rodin.Capital Alexey Rodin. However, the authorities still need to clearly structure the process of appealing the blocking. Now defrosting sometimes takes more than a week, and often clients cannot perform any important operations until the circumstances are clarified. It is necessary to debug the system so that banks can promptly resolve the issue for bona fide customers — for example, within one or two hours, the expert noted.
— It's better to tweak the algorithms so that they immediately analyze the involvement and possible connections between people. If the violator lives in Kaliningrad, and the namesake with similar data lives in Surgut, they work in different fields and have never come into contact, then the second one should not suffer because of the first one, — Alexey Krichevsky emphasized.
To make the system work better, it is worth introducing additional identifiers for blocking, fast data exchange and a clear procedure for removing restrictions, Vladimir Chernov agreed.
This requires expert discussion, careful elaboration and a clear range of criteria that will appear after the hearing of the bill in the State Duma and the adoption of the law, agreed Galaktion Kuchava, an expert of the "Popular Front". The Central Bank is already calling on banks to better explain to citizens the grounds for blocking, so we need to find a balance.
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