Attempted fraud after mortgage offer

goldhair86

Hi all

I was issued my mortgage offer a few weeks back and am in the process of buying my first home. I’m so excited I can’t even put it into words. Everything seemed to be running really smoothly until I opened my post box the other day and a letter from HSBC was sitting in there. I have no products with HSBC and my mortgage is with TSB. I opened it and it looks as though someone has tried to fraudulently open a bank account in my name but it was declined. I contacted HSBC to investigate but they tell me I have to go into a branch as they need me to produce ID before they can look into it. 

I’m going to pop into a branch during the week but I’m panicking that this might have some knock on effect to my mortgage offer. My house is still being built and I’m not looking to complete for a few months yet. 

Does anyone know if this could cause issues for me? HSBC did say that once an investigation is launched, the search can be removed from my credit file.

Am I worrying unnecessarily?

propertyhunter

Check your credit reports for any hard checks you can't explain to make sure you're a victim of identity theft. If any appear, then you just need to call those lenders and tell them about the fraud. The lenders will likely put a Cifas marker on your credit file and then remove the searches.

After ringing up the various lenders who the fraudster had used when stealing my own identity, it took about 1-2 months for all of the searches to drop off, but in the interim, the Cifas marker tells your mortgage provider that you've had your identity stolen.  Check with your broker what this means for you (probably nothing to worry about since ID theft happens a lot). 

K_S

goldhair86 said:

Hi all

I was issued my mortgage offer a few weeks back and am in the process of buying my first home. I’m so excited I can’t even put it into words. Everything seemed to be running really smoothly until I opened my post box the other day and a letter from HSBC was sitting in there. I have no products with HSBC and my mortgage is with TSB. I opened it and it looks as though someone has tried to fraudulently open a bank account in my name but it was declined. I contacted HSBC to investigate but they tell me I have to go into a branch as they need me to produce ID before they can look into it. 

I’m going to pop into a branch during the week but I’m panicking that this might have some knock on effect to my mortgage offer. My house is still being built and I’m not looking to complete for a few months yet. 

Does anyone know if this could cause issues for me? HSBC did say that once an investigation is launched, the search can be removed from my credit file.

Am I worrying unnecessarily?

@goldhair86 Sorry to hear about this.

With respect to your mortgage mortgage, if it's just this one hard-check from the fraudulent application, it's very unlikely to have any impact. However, as the poster above suggested, get a copy of all three of your credit reports (Experian, Equifax, Transunion) and pore over the hard-checks section to see if there's anything on there that you don't recognise. They may well have applied for other products (such as credit cards, etc.) as well and you want to be able to catch that early and contact those lenders so they don't progress those applications.

I have had cases in the past where clients have had their identity stolen, new credit cards opened, maxed out and then discarded with arrears then showing on the report and they only came to know when I asked them to get a copy of their credit report for a mortgage application.