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As of November 24 this year, around 1,940 banks — mostly cooperative ones — have been named as “financial institutions that do not satisfactorily verify financial statements,” according to the UK Border Agency.
It means that students who need to show evidence that they have enough funds to support themselves through a course in the UK won't be able to rely on statements from any of those institutions. The agency, part of Britain's Home Office, provides a full list of names, ranging from the Ahmedabad Mercantile Co-Op Bank Ltd, to the Bangalore City Co-operative Bank Ltd, to the Pondicherry Coop. Urban Bank.
In most cases the banks had been excluded because they didn't verify financial statements to the UKBA's satisfaction in at least half of a sample of cases looked at, UKBA said. That meant that requests for further information weren't responded to, or that UKBA weren't able to get in contact with the bank. Others had been excluded because they weren't part of wider verification schemes. “The list will be kept under review and additions or deletions made as appropriate,” said UKBA in a statement.
Just 85 banks make it onto the list of accepted Indian institutions, ranging from ICICI to Karnataka Bank to subsidiaries of foreign financial institutions including Citibank, BNP Paribas, and the Bank of Nova Scotia.
In June this year, as part of a wider tightening of the immigration system, UKBA said it would publish lists of acceptable institutions for the Tier-4 visa application process. Once listed, the ban on a specific institution will come into effect in 30 days.
The initial list of accepted and excluded institutions covers just three countries: India, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Tightening the immigration process for students has been a central part of the coalition Government's pledge to reduce non-EU immigration from the “hundreds of thousands” to the “tens of thousands”.
The Government believes that major abuses of the system had taken place. The Prime Minister of the UK, Mr David Cameron, told MPs earlier this year that more than a third of student applications verified by the British embassy's visa department in New Delhi last June were found to contain forged documents. Large numbers of education providers in the UK have had their licences revoked, while others won't be able to bring in non-EU students.
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