Nat West

eskbanker

missile said:
You said Nat West make the "rules". The "fact" is that is not true.

I said no such thing!  The actual exchange was:

eskbanker said:

missile said:

Banks can make their own "rules"

To a certain extent, yes - it's a heavily regulated sector, but there remains considerable discretion beyond what's defined in legislation and regulation.  This is one of the concerns expressed by the Treasury Select Committee (see earlier link), i.e. that they expect the Payment Services Regulator to be controlling this, rather than delegating it to Pay UK, which is closer to a trade association.

which simply reflects the fact that there is a hierarchy of governance:

The top tier is primary legislation - Acts of Parliament such as the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 or the Data Protection Act 2018.

Next is the regulations, strictly speaking controlled by the Payment Services Regulator but typically managed day to day by the Financial Conduct Authority, and enacted via the FCA Handbook.

Below that is Pay UK and UK Finance, trade bodies which were responsible for implementing the likes of the CRM code for APP scams and the Confirmation of Payee initiative, on behalf of the banks, so at this level it could be argued that banks are collectively setting their own "rules" in such areas, although clearly there is significant stakeholder consultation involved.

However, within, and subject to, the confines of these layers, each bank, like any other organisation, has its own policies, procedures and standards, such as password strength controls, or interest rates, or application thresholds, or whatever.

I have no idea where you think you're going with your repetitive hypothesis that NatWest makes its own "rules", but if you believe that NatWest is doing something that's out of line with industry standards then feel free to clarify what you actually mean....

Likewise, feel free to actually answer the question that you've evaded more than once now: "in what way do you believe that NatWest aren't actually complying with their obligations under the CRM code and the relevant legislative and regulatory controls?"

jimjames

eskbanker said:

RG2015 said:

eskbanker said:

RG2015 said:

p00hsticks said:

RG2015 said:

I still find NatWest’s response to the complaint quite bizarre. Three days is an incredibly short space of time for them to have investigated the claim and suspended the account.

But in cases of alleged fraud, my understanding from reading these boards is that it doesn't happen that way round. The account is suspended first and only then does the claim get investigated.

But NatWest must have made some sort of preliminary investigation before suspending the OP's accounts.

Otherwise anyone could cause banking chaos by fraud claims against multiple users. 

As I understand it, any preliminary investigation is only carried out by the sender's bank, i.e. the sender has to convince their bank that they're being scammed, and once that's happened, the recipient's bank is effectively working on the assumption that the sender's bank is acting in good faith.  Any investigation that the recipient's bank conducts does clearly need input from the recipient, and while waiting for that, some sort of action needs to be taken to prevent the money being withdrawn, otherwise it could be too late - obviously if a (real) fraudster is told that their account will be frozen after some investigating, it's not hard to envisage what would happen!

But yes, as above, this is open to abuse....

I am sorry, but the OP received £8 and returned £8 to the sender's bank.

The sender's bank can see all of this.

How on earth could they convince the OP's bank of a case of any wrongdoing?

Yes, if the sender's bank could see the refunded money at the time their customer made the claim then yes, it's hard to understand why they'd have proceeded to notify OP's bank.

Although when you receive the payment you have no idea of the account it has come FROM. You are reliant on the sender to give the correct account details to return the payment TO. That may not be the same account that money was sent from.

jimjames

missile said:

eskbanker said:

eskbanker said:

missile said:

In my world,
It will be interesting to see whether the Ombudsman agrees with you.

Agreed - as above I'm not claiming that NatWest's actions are proportionate, so it will be revealing to see what FOS makes of it.  Chances are that there will already be similar cases on their decision database....

To return to this earlier discussion about the ombudsman, I had a brief look around and came across a similar (but not identical) scenario, in which a Mr B made a payment to a seller who banked with NatWest, and, after not receiving what he believed he was entitled to, notified his bank that he considered this to be a scam.  The crux of the case differs from the situation being discussed in this thread, but IMHO it's worth observing a passing comment from the ombudsman in the midst of some wider deliberations:

NatWest froze the receiving account and restricted the seller’s access to it pending further enquiries. This is what I would expect to happen when a bank is put on notice of a potential problem and funds still remain.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2164073.pdf

Edit:

missile said:
I edited my post to reflect your "helpful" corrections of my terminology, i.e. payee/ payer etc.

In your world: The bank can create their own "rules" and have acted correctly
In my world: The bank has not been reasonable and it will be interesting to see if ombudsman agrees.

I was typing the above when you posted again - the edit I was referring to was your additional question ("In your world; it may be it reasonable for NW to suspect fraud and block access to a client of 50 years on the strength of one unsupported allegation?"), which wasn't there originally.  Anyway, as above, there is FOS precedent that NW's actions in this situation are not only reasonable but expected....

In your world: a bank can makes their own rules and should block client account before investigating the third parties claim.

They probably should. What happens if it was a scammer and in the delay waiting for bank to investigate they move all the funds out of the account? 

flaneurs_lobster

If a scammer can persuade someone to move funds to an account under their control then they can move it on again just as quickly. It would need to be an extraordinarily quick response from the scammee and their bank to stop this onward transmission.