New federal legislation designed to curb money laundering and terrorism has made banking difficult for some people in Arctic Canada.

Under the rigorous legislation, every account must be linked to an address with a street name, said Ben DeCastro, a spokesman for ING Direct. DeCastro says the bank must verify the addresses for each of its 1.5 million clients.

"Since [the Sept. 11 attacks], there's been a lot of legislation out there that we have to comply with and one is anti-money laundering, obviously. And then there's the anti-terrorist legislation," he said. "We have a certain ID verification that we have to do for every client now."

But many northern communities don't have street names, says Paul Diamond, of Pond Inlet on the northern tip of Nunavut's Baffin Island. Diamond says his ING savings account was blocked because the bank had only a post office box number listed with his account.

"I had a long chat with their tech support guy and he pretty much told me that I can't have an account because my street doesn't have a name," Diamond said.

Diamond says he was upset that the bank never contacted him and that he only learned his account had been suspended when he tried and failed to access it online.

DeCastro says the bank will implement safeguards to protect against these types of incidents, noting that the problem is unique to communities in Northern Canada.

"One of the flags is if they don't have a regular address, we have to go a step farther and try to identify who this person is," DeCastro said.