Card Protection

starword

Lloyds/TSB offer an overseas banking facility for those expats who reside outside the UK. This perfectly legitimate service is a way of ensuring that those of us who reside overseas can keep a Sterling account which is UK based with the facility of a Debit Card etc.

Lloyds have been charging £50 a year for maintaining this account (they offer Euro and Dollar accounts as well). Recently we have all received letters informing us of a 50% increase in the subscription to £75 pa. At the same time a significant benefit has been withdrawn. Membership of the Overseas Club included free Sentinel Card protection. With the levels of fraud and card theft reaching epidemic proportions this was a significant benefit. With effect from 1st April it will be withdrawn.

There is some confusion about the reasons for this change of benefit - Sentinel say it is on instruction from the FSA that they are acting - although it beats me as to what the FSA have got to do with whether a benefit is offered or not. But then surprise, surprise, Sentinel say that they will offer card service for an annual fee but without the fraud cover. This means that people living outside the UK are now without any cover should they become victims of card crime

Reaper

I suspect that it is related to the clearing up of a grey area - it is been ruled that credit card companies are not liable to reimburse you for problems when using your card overseas.

Sentinel's offer to cover you is, I suspect, based on the assumption that until now it has hardly ever needed to pay out because the credit card company would have covered it.

Since an expat card is like to be used almost exclusively overseas they now could be hit by lots of claims which they can no longer reclaim from the credit card company.

This is guesswork but it would seem to make sense.

Reaper

On reflection I'm not sure I'm right. I think the Section 75 ruling only covers disputed transations, not fraud.

If the credit card companies are still liable for overseas fraud then my guesswork collapses in a heap. And it was such a good theory too!