fabulis

Who would have thunk it?

When we took to our blog last Wednesday night to expose the fact that Citibank had blocked our bank account and marked it for termination due to “objectionable” content on our site, we had no idea where this story would go.

As we know now, it went very far.  The story was picked up everywhere.

But the icing on the cake didn’t happen until over this weekend.

On Friday evening we finally learned what actually happened!  It turns out that a compliance officer at Citibank did a review of the fabulis website and blog and marked it as porn!

Porn?

Say what?  I challenge anyone to review our content and find anything there that could be reasonably labeled as porn.

You can’t.

It was clearly a mistake on the bank’s part — one which highlights the prevailing subtle forms of homophobia and/or lack of understanding we see periodically from some big corporations.  Someone there made a misguided decision in reviewing our content and the systems and policies of the bank allowed it to go through.

But the best part of this whole story came over this past weekend when we got word by email that Citibank has gone ahead and updated/revised its policies for internet businesses due to the fabulis affair.  The following policy update was posted this weekend on Citibank’s website.

Citibank Message About Internet Business Accounts

At Citibank, we have learned a great deal from recent customer issues related to Internet business accounts. Mistakes were made in some instances, in which we apologized and corrected the problem. These issues made it clear to us that the language in our branch procedures was not specific enough and left too much room for interpretation from one account to the next.

We recognized that we needed clearer and less subjective guidelines with regard to opening Internet business accounts.  And there were clearly gaps in training and communications around these specific branch procedures. Based on all these learnings, we’ve taken action and this week we updated and clarified our procedures for opening all Internet business accounts.

Banks are required by law to conduct due diligence and understand the nature of business accounts.  For Internet business accounts, we have made it clearer to our bankers what the due diligence process entails.  For example, we will continue to reserve the right to decline or suspend an account if we find illegal or discriminatory content, or if the site involves gambling or pornography.  Beyond that specific due diligence, however, we do not monitor or evaluate our customers’ web content.

We are providing additional training in this area to ensure the procedures are uniformly and correctly followed.  Also, our bankers are now required to have additional consultation with senior level banking executives when questions arise about these accounts before making any final decisions.  This will help to avoid misunderstanding and subjective decisions, and promote greater consistency throughout the process.  And we remain committed to working with our customers to try to resolve any issues.

As a global organization, we also recognize the power and promise of diversity.  In that spirit, we reiterate Citi’s commitment to serving customers, hiring talent and supporting a broad array of organizations that promote diversity. To learn more about our diversity efforts, please visit: http://www.citigroup.com/citi/citizen/diversity/index.htm.

These recent customer issues have been a useful learning experience for us.  We again apologize for any misunderstandings that may have occurred. We are committed to improving every day and we’re working to better serve our customers.

Bravo Citibank.  You are now entering the modern era.  Let’s see how you live up to it.

Let me close this chapter by saying that this whole episode wasn’t about fabulis, it’s about the power of social media.  fabulis was just the product.  Social media was the platform. Thousands of tweets and voices of outcry got Citi to change its policies in less than 72 hours.  Think about that.  The Obama Administration can’t get the banks to change, but we can!

p.s. If anyone in Congress needs some help with financial regulatory reform, give us at fabulis a call.  We seem to have figured out how to get banks to change their ways.