Shawbrook Bank - Warning

dinger

I recently opened an esaver account with them and when everything went smoothly I made deposits from not only my nominated account but other accounts too. When I came to make a withdrawal they said that they had been unable to verify my nominated account. I have only been with this building society since 1987!!(nominated account) They said in their secure message that they would send me an email as to how to resolve this. Below is the text from the email, which, if you look at the different font types and the lousy grammar, spelling and the link that doesn't work, one could easily mistake it as a phishing attempt!! 

"Dear Mrs Smith,

We’re contacting you because the nominated account linked, or you would like to link to your Shawbrook Savings account has failed our electronic bank check. We take your personal security and fraud prevention very seriously, so we need to verify that the bank detail you provided us with are registered under your name and address.

What do you need to do?

Consents.Online is our Open Banking partner, and offers you a safe and secure way to verify your bank details. Click on the link below to do this.

Verify your bank details >>

https://connect.consents.online/shawbrookobid?externalReference=62734941

This is a quick and easy process. Consents.Online will ask you for your permission to give us one-time access to your account information. You will then be transferred to your bank where you will need to sign into your account so we can verify your details.

Once you have completed this, we’ll email you to let you know if we’ve be able to successfully verified your details.

Please note, if you do not verify your details, we will not be able to accept transfers to or, from that account.  

If you have any questions, please visit our FAQs.

Best wishes,

Shawbrook Savings Team"  

It would appear that I have to agree to allow this third party to data mine my current account if I wish to get at my money!!

https://www.openbanking.org.uk/how-open-banking-can-help-consumers/

https://www.which.co.uk/money/banking/switching-your-bank/open-banking-sharing-your-financial-data-a1pUo7y2TnqS#do-i-have-to-share-my-banking-data

This was not made known in the key product information sheet. There is only one line in the T&C's which says

"In future, we may look to electronically verify your identity and/or contact details by other means not included in this condition 5"

  This is a very sly and covert way to get one to compromise their privacy! I am about to tell them to poke their account and will be very careful in future to check T&C's. Perhaps a thread should be started listing financial institutions which operate in this way for those who wish to avoid them

Bigwheels1111

I only use a old long standing bank to fund or receive interest from all products.

A building society is not a bank and there is your issue.

Now confirmation of payee is a big issue.

poppystar

Have you seen the other thread on Shawbrook cloning posted today? That email does not look real although having said that I had a dreadful one from HMCTS which I feared was a scam because of the grammar and spelling and wasn’t - so maybe that is what Shawbrook send out. I must admit to leaving Shawbrook quite soon after opening an account because of their very clunky system.

Doctor_Who

Have you seen the other thread on Shawbrook cloning posted today?

In case the OP can't find it from the title (Fraud call concerns):

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6460934/fraud-call-concerns

poppystar

Doctor_Who said:

Have you seen the other thread on Shawbrook cloning posted today?

In case the OP can't find it from the title (Fraud call concerns):

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6460934/fraud-call-concerns

Cheers, couldn’t figure out how to do the link! 

Eyeful

dinger

The link you supplied for the "Verify your bank details >>"

Has been blocked by Malwarebytes Browser Guard due to "suspicious top level domain".
 They say to turn back. 

Be sure you are not dealing with a " Shawbrook Bank Ltd Clone" that the FCA has warned about in the past.

dinger

Thanks for the "heads up" poppystar and the the link Dr_Who, very thoughtful!

 Fortunately, I use the initial £1 deposit trial runs on new BACs payments too and when I opened the account I clicked through from MSE's top instant access savings link and bookmarked it. Below is a redacted copy of a secure message on the issue

   

https://www.openbanking.org.uk/how-open-banking-can-help-consumers/

If one understands the idea of this "Opening banking" (please see the link above) then allowing a third-party access as described above would appear to me to be tantamount to giving the third-party organisation permission to hack one's bank account for commercial gain! Which magazine suspects that leaks in security - at the expense of a customer - could end up in a blame game amongst the organisations involved?

Just to add to that, a couple of weeks ago I went through the application for an instant access account with Yorkshire Building Society. It was all set up until they asked me similarly to verify myself with a third party! Not the case with Family Building Society or Tesco Bank! 

poppystar

If you’ve been with them for so long and only now have an online account I’d be speaking to them about how you can get access to the money some other way - presumably you could do that with the older accounts? I personally wouldn’t want to agree to the open banking to do this verification. I don’t see why you should have to. I’d also then quit Shawbrook no matter how long you’ve been loyal!

dinger

Eyeful said:

dinger

The link you supplied for the "Verify your bank details >>"

Has been blocked by Malwarebytes Browser Guard due to "suspicious top level domain".
 They say to turn back. 

Be sure you are not dealing with a " Shawbrook Bank Ltd Clone" that the FCA has warned about in the past.

Thanks mate, I was never going to use those links.   

dinger

poppystar said:

If you’ve been with them for so long and only now have an online account I’d be speaking to them about how you can get access to the money some other way - presumably you could do that with the older accounts? I personally wouldn’t want to agree to the open banking to do this verification. I don’t see why you should have to. I’d also then quit Shawbrook no matter how long you’ve been loyal!

This is my first account with them. It is disgusting, I would never have begun the application if I knew I was going to have to consent to a third party accessing my current account. Who would give their login details to anyone never mind a third party and allow them to mine data from their current account!! There was nothing stipulating this in the key product information or on the website. I would now advise everyone who is opening a new bank account to ask if there is any requirement to accept opening banking in order to use the account and if the answer is yes, run a mile!

SJMALBA

This all sounds rather strange. Shawbrook's help pages say that they will only accept money from/pay money out to one nominated account, yet you say you've paid money in from a number of accounts? Is this why the problem has arisen? Have you tried phoning Shawbrook?

FWIW, from their help pages:

https://help.shawbrook.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/10953614174866-Who-are-Consents-Online