Victims of bank transfer scams deserve better

For a bank to claim they are satisfied all the necessary banking ID checks compliant with regulatory banking practices and codes are carried out when opening a new account, without evidence of surveillance to this effect, it is failing to protect the financial interests of the customer who unwittingly transfers money into a fraudulent account.

As long as banks are able to continue to abide by their own appointed codes and put their own interests before that of their customers, fraudsters will continue to open new accounts using stolen IDs and false documents and take money from the banks customers without any expenditure or loss to the banks themselves.

I think before we repeatedly criticise banks about introducing CoP we need to properly understand the problems involved. From what I read, getting this done was not the straightforward task that some assume. Maybe Which? could ask someone knowledgeable to explain both sides of this @gmartin ? When we see the facts we could then launch an informed discussion |(although really, as it is now with us, it would not seem to do more than confirm, or otherwise, our preconceptions 🙂 ).

In the absence of CoP there was a simple way to check your money was going to the right person. Simply to move a token amount, check with the intended recipient it had been received, then knowing their details were correct in your banking database you could safely move the balance. I have done this from the start of my online banking. So, I believe, have many others.

I agree, as I said above, that cases must be judged on their merits. Simply refunding everyone who has fallen for a scam (or, heaven forbid, may try to take advantage of the generosity by creating their own scam) without any determination of who is responsible is wrong. It means I, you, and everyone else who uses banks, will subsidise those people with varying degrees of irresponsibility and lead to less responsible behaviour.

I also believe the banks should do more to help customers be more responsible through education, in part, but also by tailoring account facilities to match the perceived abilities of the account holder. So someone who is less confident, or whose family regard them as not well versed in dealing with finances and vulnerable to fraudsters, could have limitations placed on their online transactions – limited in daily amount, limited to preset payees, require a second authorisation, as examples.

Before around 1960, banking wasn’t really operated for the man in the street, it was largely a commercial affair for companies, shopkeepers and the professional classes who did business in guineas.

As you point out, as a service, it has not fully adapted to today’s market for retail banking and its overall priority has been to acquire as many accounts as possible, almost at any cost knowing that customer inertia is the main prize.

I don’t agree with that. I well remember in the early 1950s going into the Yorkshire Penny Bank with my Dad, whose salary was paid in and who had a cheque book to make payments and withdraw cash. My original bank account in the early 1960s was attuned to my needs as it still is, together with a mutual with whom I do my main banking; all very satisfactory.

Their service has provided me with easy-to-use online banking, again that meets all my requirements. So I think in my case the banks I use have met my needs as a private customer. Which? seem to agree.

Before 1960, most workers’ weekly wages were paid in cash and many used trustee savings banks, regional penny banks or savings banks, mutual benefit societies, the coop bank or the Post Office savings bank to hold any excess funds, since running a bank account with a high street bank was expensive because there was a charge for every deposit and withdrawal.

Professional people, and those on a monthly salary or fee-earning, usually had high street bank accounts and paid their household bills by cheque. The advantages were access to loans and overdrafts, bankers’ references, and foreign currency for those who could afford holidays abroad.

Banking reflected the class system, and to a large degree still does, but, as Beryl rightly points out, money crime has moved from raiding banks and holding-up the staff and customers to invading our private accounts by insidious means. Watching an old episode of The Sweeney shows how it used to be done. The police are still geared up for the traditional methods but have yet to come up to speed on modern theft.