Money not refunded by bank after I was mugged

Shakin_Steve

Personally, I'd have given them whatever they wanted. As they made sure they had access to your banking app before they left you alone, it wouldn't have mattered if the app was protected by a fingerprint or Face ID, they would have used your finger or held the phone up to your face.
You have my sincere sympathy, and I hope you are recovering well.
As for the return of your money, I guess that all hinges on whether the bank should have stopped the transactions due to unusual or suspicious activity. Their defence, of course, will be the OTP, if one was sent. The fact that you were mugged really doesn't come into it, I don't think. If someone pulls a knife and takes your wallet, the bank cannot be held liable for that.

Zanderman

Shakin_Steve said:

As for the return of your money, I guess that all hinges on whether the bank should have stopped the transactions due to unusual or suspicious activity. Their defence, of course, will be the OTP, if one was sent. The fact that you were mugged really doesn't come into it, I don't think. If someone pulls a knife and takes your wallet, the bank cannot be held liable for that.

Yes, that's the difficulty I see here. OP was mugged, and forced to give out banking security. That's awful, frightening and painful. 

But if the transactions were carried out with full security checks being answered correctly then the bank can't be automatically blamed or asked to refund. The issue is whether the bank should have flagged the transactions as suspicious because they were unusual, either because of the amounts or the time of night or both. But even if they were flagged as suspicious and the bank checked and got security answered via the stolen phone then the transactions might still, quite reasonably, be deemed ok by them. 

This is surely an awful grey area - if you're mugged and your physical valuables are stolen then your only recourse is insurance or the police recovering the physical goods. You can't hold the manufacturer of the valuables to blame for them.

If the valuables in question are your phone, security details for your bank and your watch then is the bank any more liable than the phone manufacturer and watchmaker? And if not can you actually get insurance for losing money from your bank account due to be mugged and forced to hand over your logins? I'm guessing not. So what should one do?

I hope OP does get at least some redress from the bank.

Edited to add: one moral, after the event I know, of this might be to consider not having bank apps on your phone. I've been thinking about this for some months, wondering whether it would be safer to have the bank apps only on my tablet, which generally stays at home. I rarely truly need access to the actual bank apps when out and about. So why do I carry them with me on the phone? Phone is needed for OTPs etc, but isn't, usually, needed to run the apps. 

Kim_13

I suspect OP would be more likely to recover the money lost in transactions 2 and 3 by arguing that the bank were negligent (one large transfer after another should be ringing alarm bells, in fact it would be quite usual to expect the bank to place a temporary block on your account if you attempted to do such a thing, which they would not lift until they had spoken to the account holder and obtained any evidence required as to the legitimacy of the transactions.)

No one in their right mind would refuse to give their security details in the circumstances described (and I'd be worried about getting such details wrong in a terrified state and being stabbed for giving them a wrong number that they might deem a deliberate act of defiance.) Presumably the bank did indeed receive an affirmative response to a security check via the muggers using the OP's phone. If they ultimately do refuse to refund the first transaction on that basis, rather than being of the opinion that the bank should have done more, I'd be thinking of it in terms that it might well be a good thing that the transaction was allowed to go through. Clearly, the muggers were not going to let you go without checking that they were able to remove money from your bank account, so had the bank blocked that first transaction, you might well be lying in a morgue at this moment.

My advice to anyone is to use online banking/banking apps only on a device that they rarely if ever take out of the house, and never when alone. Then the financial loss is limited, assuming that all attempts to get the funds reimbursed fail, to the value of the phone and the limit/available funds of any cards in your possession or stored on the phone (hopefully just a couple.) 

Sea_Shell

Regards the insurance aspect...

Very rich people can, I believe, buy kidnap and ransom cover.   

This was brought to mind today by the couple who've just won £60+ million on the lottery.   Going public with that sort of money, you risk making yourself a target.

For the average Joe, I'm not sure if you can cover financial loss under duress, if the bank doesn't agree to reimburse you.

It's a sad state of affairs that this is happening on our streets, and reports of knife crime are increasing ☹️

overspender22

Sorry this happened to you OP. How frightening. Hope you get the money back. I’m seriously considering removing all my banking apps from my phone bar one, and only having spending money (under £100) in it, and just using online banking at home on my laptop for other financial stuff. Sad state of affairs. 

Olinda99

makes me wonder maybe you should uninstall any app on your phone where you keep the bulk of your savings

I am thinking about as an example Marcus where transfers are pretty much instant and if you were under duress you could be forced to transfer the lot

maybe a safer option is to have your savings in a place that takes for example a few hours to transfer I'm thinking as an example Coventry building society or NS and I where even if a transfer was initiated it would take some time to come over

phillw

Olinda99 said:

maybe a safer option is to have your savings in a place that takes for example a few hours to transfer I'm thinking as an example Coventry building society or NS and I where even if a transfer was initiated it would take some time to come over

I'm not sure I'd describe being detained by a mugger for a few hours while the transfer goes through as a safer option.

Kim_13

phillw said:

Olinda99 said:

maybe a safer option is to have your savings in a place that takes for example a few hours to transfer I'm thinking as an example Coventry building society or NS and I where even if a transfer was initiated it would take some time to come over

I'm not sure I'd describe being detained by a mugger for a few hours while the transfer goes through as a safer option.

Coventry is next working day and to the nominated account only. That isn’t the victim refusing to hand over their money, but the process their building society use. Should the less well off therefore stay home, as they might be killed for not being a lucrative enough victim? 

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

Regards the insurance aspect...

Very rich people can, I believe, buy kidnap and ransom cover.   

This was brought to mind today by the couple who've just won £60+ million on the lottery.   Going public with that sort of money, you risk making yourself a target.

For the average Joe, I'm not sure if you can cover financial loss under duress, if the bank doesn't agree to reimburse you.

It's a sad state of affairs that this is happening on our streets, and reports of knife crime are increasing ☹️

K&R isn't very often bought by individuals, it's much more commonly bought by companies to cover their high skilled staff/exec in high risk territories. 

Its a very unusual class of insurance, most people covered by K&R insurance don't know they are (big moral risk if they know they're covered for $10m, maybe get a mate to fake one and go halves on the money). The one thing I've never fully worked out is how they comply with legislation around money laundering, sanctions, funding terrorism etc. I know in part it's through using middlemen but the regs generally don't let you turn a blind eye to the intended end recipient simply by inserting someone between you and the ISIS kidnappers etc. 

Veteransaver

The use of OTPs via text is a big flaw in banks' security processes. They use them because it is cheaper for them but they are effectively outsourcing the security to a third party (a mobile phone company).
We've all seen the cases where people have had sim swaps or SIM transfers done which completely compromise the whole OTP security.
Many banking apps allow significant sums to be transferred to completely new payees too via faster payment, the main line of defence is the OTP. Banks should have proper systems in place to block significant transactions especially to a new payee. Santander for example are particularly good at this (although in my experience often annoyingly so if you are trying to pay some money out!)
Imo bank should reimburse in such events after they've investigated of course. It's just a cost of doing business for them, and overall it's cheaper to pay up in these cases than spend millions in additional security, Eg giving everyone a card reader or having someone you to confirm identity.
I don't agree with some people on here saying it wouldn't be the bank's fault if you were mugged and they nicked your cash so why is this different? well most people aren't carrying around several thousands of pounds in cash!
We do pay banks to look after our money after all, as opposed to walking about with huge wads of cash! Some banks simply don't do a very good job at it though.