Lost money making a transfer

Waitinglong

Hello!

This is my first post here and would like to get some advice. Hope I'm posting in the right place.

I am an Indian living in the UK for more than 11 years. I have a life insurance policy with HDFC in India and I have been making my premium payments from here for the last 5 years without any issues.

This time, the Indian bank made changes to the way money could be transferred from UK to India. They stipulated that the money would be accepted only if routed through a particular Barclays Bank account. I don't have a Barclays bank account and after speaking to both Barclays and my bank (Lloyds), I was able to confirm that the recipient account was a UK business account belonging to HDFC, INDIA. This account is held at Barclays, Leicester.

On 24th Jan, I made a faster payment from my Lloyds personal account to said Barclays account giving my HDFC customer ID as reference. When I contacted HDFC customer services by email, they said they couldn't trace the money and asked for proof in form of MT103. I contacted Lloyds bank again and was told that MT103 is generated only in case of international telegraghic transfers but confirmed that my money has gone to Barclays account.

I was advised by both HDFC and Lloyds (a bit late) that I will have to make an international telegraphic transfer, which I did the second time around on 6th Feb and the money has reached the recipient in time to pay my premiums. Lloyds filed a payment in error claim to get back my first payment. I have been told today that they have not received any update from Barclays and advised me to contact citizens bureau. From there I have been going in a circle, directed to consumer services and back again to Lloyds.

This is all distressing as the money is a big amount and I'm stuck now and extremely upset. How do I get back my money now?

Browntoa

Sounds like you got scammed

How did you get told about the "changes"

I'm suspecting the notification was spoofed

Waitinglong

No, not a scam bcos I used the same account details to make the international transfer and it went through. I had several conversations with the customer service and it's on their website too...the problem was by making faster payment, the payment stopped at the first stop (Barclays UK) and the second step of moving to India didn't happen.

LHW99

Have you made a formal complaint (written, preferably using recorded / guaranteed delivery) to Barclays, wih a copy to Lloyds?
Sometimes that can trigger better action than phoning. Ensure you head the letter "Complaint" and add any reference numbers, account details etc.

bowlhead99

It is not unusual to have an overseas bank clear their foreign currencies through a correspondent bank / intermediary bank which is a direct clearer of those currencies (e.g. Barclays UK for GBP, JP Morgan Frankfurt for EUR etc).
https://www.hdfcbank.com/assets/popuppages/overseas_correspondent_bankers_details.htm

If they receive the money into that correspondent bank account (set up with the appropriate onward instruction for the beneficiary bank) they will be able to apply the funds to the ultimate recipient.

Generally if the intention is to get the funds to an international recipient you would set it up as an international payment - either specifically noting the details of the correspondent / intermediary bank when you do it, to help them route the funds. or not mentioning the Barclays intermediary and have your own bank figure out what routing is acceptable to get it to the Indian beneficiary. Sounds like that's what you did second time around.

However if you don't try to do it as an international payment and just dump the money in the intermediary account yourself by using a sort code and account number provided, there may not be enough information to pass all the information on. Because on a regular cheap domestic transfer there is not much space in the reference fields to provide the bank with all the "for further credit to:..." information. So, the money can arrive in that correspondent bank's account and just get stick there or get picked up and moved somewhere else, with the correct routing not found.

Maybe Barclays don't know where to send it. Maybe HDFC got it eventually but didn't know it was yours, etc etc. Effectively what you have done is use the faster payment system without any references other than the number of an insurance policy, to dump your money into a GBP holding account where HDFC (as a bank) gets thousands of payments en route to HDFC India, for HDFC India to pass on to its various Indian customers, only one of which is HDFC the insurance company.

The money arriving in Barclays with reference '12345ABC' is not going to get your funds to its destination because although they know the money is destined for HDFC Bank in India, they don't know that there is a customer of HDFC Bank in india which is an insurance company and that insurance company has a client with an account whose insurance policy reference '12345ABC'. It is a puzzle too complex to solve with the limited information. But they know it's intended for HDFC India so they will either try to pass to them, or try to reject it and return the funds.

Usually to return the funds they will look for the original SWIFT system message and try to repair it or wait until someone contacts them with the reference. Unfortunately you didn't put the money into the account via SWIFT (used for international transfers) you did it via a faster payments dump with very limited referencing, not the usual standard fields of an MT103 SWIFT message.

Just because there is no SWIFT message, it doesn't mean all is lost. There will still be some bank-to-bank referencing on this which Lloyds should be able to pull from their record of how they made the payment to Barclays. The same way as if some scammer tricked you into sending money to his accounts, they can try to work with the receiving bank to recall the funds, if they're still there. So really this is a job for Lloyds to work with Barclays (and Barclays's customer, HDFC Bank, if necessary - though probably not the ultimate recipient, HDFC insurance) to recover the funds. I can't see that Citizen's Advice will tell you any different.

Browntoa wrote: »

Sounds like you got scammed

How did you get told about the "changes"

I'm suspecting the notification was spoofed

I wouldn't assume it is a scam or spoof trying to trick you into paying it to the wrong place, but just a mistake or miscommunication on how you should go about paying to HDFC insurance's HDFC Bank account in India via their UK correspondent.

You could try the complaint letter suggested by LHW99 but sent to Lloyds rather than just copied to them, as ultimately you will need their help to get the reference numbers from that first payment you made and it is much more efficient if they provide that info to Barclays rather than have a lay person like yourself involved who doesn't know what the references mean or any of the systems jargon.

movilogo

I can't help OP but in case anyone has similar situation then this might help.

It is common for Indian banks to request transfer of money to a local UK bank account. They use a reference code so that they i.e. Indian bank can track payment to appropriate record.

However, a better way is to send money to India directly to your own account (preferably NRE/NRO a/c with corresponding Indian bank) and then transfer the money internally in India.

In this case, international transfer is happening from your UK a/c to your Indian a/c - so chances of things going wrong is much less.

In some cases, you can instantly see your money in Indian bank a/c.

Waitinglong

Thank you!!!! @bowlhead99 That's precisely what happened! Although my reference was my HDFC bank account number so that the money would reach that account and the premiums were paid by direct debit from that account. Similar to what movilogo has suggested, I was trying to transfer from my UK account to HDFC NRE account.

But you're right. I spoke again to Lloyds customer service and asked them to contact Barclays to get proof of receipt. Meanwhile they have sent another query to Barclays asking why the money cannot be returned. Once I have these answers in form of letters, I will contact HDFC BANK again to see of they can trace it, if they are not able to make any progress before then. I will also write to Lloyds as suggested by LHW99. (Sorry, still trying to figure out how to quote from your posts!). Feeling much more optimistic after reading your replies.