Fraud victim reimbursement rankings revealed - how did your bank fare?

People conned by fraudsters face a lottery when trying to get their money back, with some major banks reimbursing almost every penny while others pay back just a fraction of losses.

What is APP fraud?

One typical example of APP fraud is a scammer calling claiming to be from your bank’s fraud team and urging you to move your money to a safe account, but you'll actually be sending money to an account controlled by the fraudster.

In 2019, following a super complaint from Which? to the Payment Systems Regulator, a voluntary code was launched setting out that customers not at fault for their fraud loss should be reimbursed in full. Where banks and customers shared a degree of blame, a partial reimbursement would be made. 

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*TSB was unable to separate out reimbursements ordered by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) from its data, causing its reimbursement statistic to be overstated in the chart – but the PSR says this is not likely to have any material effect on its ranking.

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Which? calls for mandatory reimbursement rules

Rocio Concha, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy, said: 'These figures confirm what we have long suspected - that some firms would prefer to point the finger at blameless victims than take responsibility for customers losing money at the hands of sophisticated fraudsters. 

'It is good that these figures are now public. Regularly publishing APP fraud reimbursement rates should help to ensure the worst performers raise their game when it comes to both the prevention of APP scams and the treatment of victims afterwards. 

'Having made several positive steps in the fightback against APP fraud, there must be no further delay to the implementation of new mandatory reimbursement rules. The regulator must also abandon its proposals to introduce an unjustifiably high excess, which means a huge number of consumers will not benefit from this mandatory protection.

What the banks say

What the regulator says

Chris Hemsley, managing director of the PSR said of the new data: 'This represents a substantial improvement in transparency. This provides better information for customers on how firms handle APP fraud and encourages these firms to take more action to tackle it.

'Our approach is working because we know there is a greater focus across many more firms on preventing fraud. Our commitment to transparency and the forthcoming mandatory rules are key to strengthening efforts to prevent these frauds from happening in the first place.

'Over the coming months, we will be bringing all payment firms into new reimbursement arrangements to give more consistent protection across the board. This is important because we can see from today’s report that this has not always been the case.'

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source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/fraud-victim-reimbursement-rankings-revealed-how-did-your-bank-fare-aX7D27W6amns