Bank not prepared to protect vulnerable people from scammers

amilbourn

I help look after my very elderly parents and I am afraid they could be taken in by scammers. I asked Halifax if there was a system where they could flag the account so that if there was a request to transfer a lot of money they would check with me first.

Apparently, there is no such process. The argument was that if they did this they would need to do it for every account. Considering the banks spend hundreds of millions on IT I don't see why this is not possible. The banks other defence was that they flag up suspicious transactions to people. However, this clearly doesn't wor,k even with intelligent people, if you read the papers. They will have been intimidated by the scammers into agreeing to the transaction. 

Can anyone shed any light on any possible solutions out there with banks please?

MattMattMattUK

If your parents do not have capacity to take these decisions then you need to get lasting power of attorney. 

mebu60

MattMattMattUK said:

If your parents do not have capacity to take these decisions then you need to get lasting power of attorney. 

This. But they need to have capacity for you to do it. So if you haven't already I'd highly recommend actioning asap. £82 per LPA if you DIY via govt website. Is fairly straightforward. You will need access to a printer. 

DullGreyGuy

amilbourn said:
Considering the banks spend hundreds of millions on IT I don't see why this is not possible. 

There is always going to be a balance between protecting people from scammers/themselves and enabling legitimate transactions going through smoothly. There have been many irate rants on here in the past from banking customers who feel they have been targeted for being "old" and forced to go through extra hoops to make a transaction that they insist is legitimate.

Banks may spend millions on IT each year but typically that's 1/3 or less of the total work stack of projects proposed. When proposing a project that isn't driven by regulatory change you have to submit a business case and effectively bid for the money.

Given banks are liable for push fraud for consumer accounts there is potentially a business case there but the saving in reduced fraud cases to be covered could easily be wiped out by the customers who leave because its too hard to do routine business. 

I've done my business banking with HSBC for over a decade, I make regular payments to my own bank account using one of 4 references however HSBC only store 3 references against an account. Now each time I want to make a payment to the 4th reference I have to go through their counter fraud screening and basically have to lie on it because no options in the list meet my circumstances... its not a change, its a limitation of the system, no one told me to make the change as its my account but I have to choose from face to face, email, letter or telephone call. I've been on the verge of leaving them for a while but this irritation is likely to make it happen. 

Albermarle

mebu60 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

If your parents do not have capacity to take these decisions then you need to get lasting power of attorney. 

This. But they need to have capacity for you to do it. So if you haven't already I'd highly recommend actioning asap. £82 per LPA if you DIY via govt website. Is fairly straightforward. You will need access to a printer. 

As above an LPA could well be the best way forward, as long as they understand what they are signing.

There is also a 'Third Party Mandate' where a trusted person ( you) can have limited access to someone else's bank account. Your parents would still have access but maybe you could say to them to not ever do anything with their account as you will do it for them. This might block any scam attempts if they listen.
Guide to Third Party Mandates | Nationwide

Other banks offer similar arrangements.

M25

Assuming you don't share their house you could divert their mail to your house. Everything apart from council tax will be sent to you. This kills any paper-based scams and will quickly alert you to potential problems.

Fit an internet operated doorbell so you can see any visitors and get a sign on the door clearly telling visitors they're being surveilled live. I'd also add a few extra cameras just so they look the part for scammers at the door.

Other things you can do (and should do) is buy a call blocker for their landline. CPR is a good brand it'll automatically block many 1000s of callers and they even do a model which has a white list (ie all calls blocked except the white / allowed list).

I think banks do quite a bit -too much in fact with refunded scams- already and the responsibility should be with the customer or their families. 

A bank is not a nanny.

elsien

How do your parents feel about you monitoring their life transactions?

With regards to the above suggestion by M25, I know what my mother would say if I suggested diverting all her post and monitoring her visitors. She would be appalled by the suggested invasion of her privacy.  Older does not mean we should start to treat people as incompetent “just in case” where there is no other cause for concern. Some people may be reassured by that level of intervention. Others will not.

OP may feel it’s a good idea to be informed or larger transactions but the parents might be perfectly happy with things as they are. It’s probably going to be more effective to drum into them the types of scams that are going around.

My mother is 84 and did have a quite convincing scam call not long ago but because we had a lot of discussions about the new scams (as she is newish to online banking) and how they work, she was straight onto the bank on her other phone to check. 

badmemory

Unless they have a lot of easily accessible money I wouldn't be too worried.  And they shouldn't have too much they can get at easily as if they do it is making next to nothing for them.  If you read about the ones that did get scammed it tends to be people with large amounts sitting in current accounts.  Now that would be worth a conversation.  

My mother, then her late 80s, nearly got caught by a replacement window scam.  Suddenly realised & placed an emergency call to me, it got stopped very quickly.  It is often embarassment at being "got" that lands up with money being lost.  Luckily my mother was too tight to be worried about that.

M25

elsien said:

With regards to the above suggestion by M25, I know what my mother would say if I suggested diverting all her post and monitoring her visitors. She would be appalled by the suggested invasion of her privacy.  Older does not mean we should start to treat people as incompetent “just in case” where there is no other cause for concern. Some people may be reassured by that level of intervention. Others will not.

I think some of what I suggested would be horrible for most of us but it's up to those involved to work out what's best and not blame the banking system. That was my point.

My parents fell for that Whatsapp scheme asking for money [from a child] as they'd lost their mobile and had a new number etc etc. I've warned and warned my parents about scams and they had tried 3 times to transfer £900.00 through Nationwide and failed to. The failure wasn't Nationwide's security (although they do warn with a large red banner when making the payment) but their inability to make their way around the payment system.

I've always had to set up their 1st payment in the past and then they're fine.

I'd rather not be involved at all obviously.

My Chase bank T&Cs were updated a few weeks back saying they were now being pro-active in blocking new payments and may freeze monies for 24hrs until they can verbally confirm with the customer. Sounds good but it could also be a bag of worms as them contacting their customer is also potentially scammy and gives more ideas to the scum scammers.

I had a very rare call (1st call since before COVID) from the 'Royal Bank of Scotland' with a Scottish accent sounded very good saying someone had tried to use my debit card in Marks & Spencers -well I don't have a RBS account so the call ended quickly. problem is I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt for a few seconds because of the accent. Normally I'd have told them to **** off after a few seconds.

Vigilance seems the best cure.

born_again

TB honest here, no matter what the banks do they will not please everyone. Systems simply can not cope with one off account limitations like this, no matter how much they spend.

OP has made no mention of either power of attorney or a 3rd party mandate. Which without would mean bank would not do anything, as OP could be anyone, even a scammer at worst (no offence)

If OP wants total control over parents spending. Then they need to take full control of their funds & all that this would entail. Doing shopping & everything else. But as others have mentioned. How would parents view this action.
Add in other family members may not be happy with this. Would also be construed as deprivation of capital if parents are claiming any benefits. 

Bonniepurple

You’ll never please everyone.  I was very impressed with my bank (TSB) when they flagged a suspicious transaction.  Card cancelled, transaction refused, everyone happy.  The next day, the same thing for my other account.  Went back through the whole rigmarole, checking transactions etc - when an email dropped in thanking my daughter for her purchase!  I apologised to the bank, stressed how pleased I was that they’d acted so quickly- and then had words with my daughter.  

OP - scams happen but the best way that you can protect your parents is tell them not to click any links in unsolicited emails and to tell them that if they are ever concerned or feel pressurised just say “I need to talk it over with…”.  I’ve stressed to my Mum that if she’s ever concerned to give me a call or message and I’ll talk to them or pop round.  If the salesperson refuses, then out the door they go.