Halifax Fraud (Transferring money between own bank accounts)

Johntea

I have a Natwest account - salary paid in here
Then a Halifax account
A Llyods account (as of this week)
...then finally a Chase account (about a month old)

I did a transfer of £1500 from Natwest to Halifax no issues, but then I did the £1500 from Halifax to Llyods and up popped a message saying I needed to call the fraud team

After waiting an hour on the phone to get through they went through a few questions and checked I wasn't being instructed by a fraudster to do the transfer then released the transaction and it has now moved OK to Llyods, although I'm now paranoid about doing the same from Llyods to Chase!

I can perhaps understand the fraud argument but these accounts are all in my name which I thought was part of the verification, did I just get unlucky or are there any tips to prevent having to have my accounts locked and unlocked in future? (is it just because of how new the Llyods account is?)

As the problem is I need to do the £1500 'bounce' between the accounts on a monthly basis to avoid a £3 account fee at both Halifax and Llyods!

[Deleted User]

It's not so much that you got unlucky, but carried out slightly suspicious looking  activity. However, its probably less likely to happen the next time, as the pattern becomes established 

Alternatively, you might find scheduling standing orders a little safer. 

Notepad_Phil

Unfortunately security checks can come up at any time when transferring money, even when the destination is an account in your name - suppose for instance a fraudster got a hold of your login details for that destination account and persuaded you to send all your money to that account.

I hit the same problem as you when I was moving money from Halifax to Bank Of Scotland, which is even more ridiculous as you can see both sets of accounts on the same screen when you login onto them. So I've now set up a series of standing orders to move our money across the various accounts rather than manually logging in and transferring the money across, which I hope will reduce the chances of setting off a security check.

PRAISETHESUN

It'll become less of an issue once a pattern of rapid back and forth transfers to the same account(s) is(are) established by doing the same thing over a period of time, but as above keep in mind that the banks can still be stop and check your transfers at any time. It's for your own benefit in the long run, as I'm sure you'd much rather the bank freeze your account than let money be transferred out to a fraudster.

Like the posters above though, I've also automated my payments in/out by standing order for my various accounts and they chug along in the background without any need for outside assistance these days.

penners324

Set up a standing order between the 2. Then it happens in about 30 seconds whilst you sleep

Brie

Johntea said:

As the problem is I need to do the £1500 'bounce' between the accounts on a monthly basis to avoid a £3 account fee at both Halifax and Llyods!

There must be easier ways to save £6.

Zanderman

Brie said:

Johntea said:

As the problem is I need to do the £1500 'bounce' between the accounts on a monthly basis to avoid a £3 account fee at both Halifax and Llyods!

There must be easier ways to save £6.

Moving cash back and fro seems pretty easy to me. 

Johntea

Thanks, it didn't even come to mind to set up some standing orders to achieve this for some reason!

Brie

Zanderman said:

Brie said:

Johntea said:

As the problem is I need to do the £1500 'bounce' between the accounts on a monthly basis to avoid a £3 account fee at both Halifax and Llyods!

There must be easier ways to save £6.

Moving cash back and fro seems pretty easy to me. 

Not if you end up being on the phone for hours!!  

And the OP said this was to save an account fee being charged.  I fail to see what the real benefit is of all these accounts.

Daliah

Brie said:

 I fail to see what the real benefit is of all these accounts.

Some of us have been, and still are making several hundred pounds every year with all these accounts, either in straight cash, or in some other rewards such as cinema tickets, or in a combination of both.

Zanderman

Brie said:

Zanderman said:

Brie said:

Johntea said:

As the problem is I need to do the £1500 'bounce' between the accounts on a monthly basis to avoid a £3 account fee at both Halifax and Llyods!

There must be easier ways to save £6.

Moving cash back and fro seems pretty easy to me. 

Not if you end up being on the phone for hours!!  

And the OP said this was to save an account fee being charged.  I fail to see what the real benefit is of all these accounts.

But the OP's problem is a one-off, it won't happen every month, as previous replies have pointed out.

The accounts in question do have benefits - otherwise no-one would be going to this (small) amount of effort.

Such transfers to get benefits are regularly discussed on this forum.