UK Banks Finally take action!
 

Like many others, I guess, I got this billet-doux from one of the banks I use;

What appeals to me about this is the total lack of awareness of the writer that any normal person would have set up this check as soon as it became possible to set up a fraudulent account, ie at least 20 years ago. But not the good old British banking industry, until now, it seems.

Now that they have sorted this out, 20 years too late, let's hope they move on to the problem that any person/company can set up a Direct Debit from your account sort code and number to their account.

After this was done to us in 2008, I started a correspondence with RBS which ended with a letter from the head of Retail Banking (then Ross McEwen) confirming that this was how the DD system works, and the bank would always refund a fraudulent DD payment if and when a customer spots it. I had suggested that all they needed to do was to name check the account details provided, but he saw no need for that.

This latest announcement does not include DD demands being name-checked, as far as I can see, so this common and lucrative fraud will continue unchecked.

British banks..
Sort code - no check digit
Account code - no check digit
Name check - no thank you.

My Spanish bank, when I make a transfer, tells me the name of the recipient before I finalise the transaction.

I think the UK Bank regulator has been sitting on his hands for many years.

I don't think that the banking industry is stupid, far from it. I think that there is/was some benefit to be had for them by allowing such an open to error transfer system to prevail. Good that it's finally been rectified.

We have suffered at the hands of someone who set up DDs on our client account recently. Bank wasn't interested .. " just cancel them".

Should not be possible to do it without confirmation that the person setting it up is connected in some way to the bank account and the service/product being provided.

My bank (HSBC) needs me to enter a code derived from my little magic key when setting up a new payee. So hopefully unauthorised DDs can't happen.

Remember my boss telling me something a few years ago about his energy provider being switched - including payments - as a result of his wife simply answering a few questions from a supplier's rep in Sutton High Street - she'd agreed to more info being sent, signed a form to say she'd requested it and they did the dirty from there. Disgraceful. He had a row with them and under the the 30 days cooling off period got it rescinded.

Same for me. Unless I misunderstand was the OP not complaining that until this recent initiative the ‘recipient’ of a DD could set up a DD from your account to theirs (not ‘you’ setting up a DD from yours to theirs.). But as I say I may have misunderstood the original point.

If anyone is still so naive as to believe that British Banks have their 'customers' interests at heart, I would advise listening to today's 'You and Yours' on the Beeb R4.Not just the particular case investigated but the ex-Bank employee's reportof his employment conditions. Such nice people - and so deserving of Government support!:rolleyes:

Oh yes they can. The DD system operated by banks and retailers is that a "retailer" simply demands payment from someone's bank, using only the sort code and account number. The banks undertake to pay that without question. You and your little magic key are not required at any point in the process.

The banks defend this open door for fraudsters by intoning "we'll refund a fraudulent DD". What they don't add is that you must spot it first, and then tell them about it. There will then follow the usual interminable process based on the bank requiring you to prove that you didn't authorise it (very, very difficult), because if you can't you must be a criminal trying to steal their money and you will be treated as such. In my experience, even when it is proven that a retailer set up a fraudulent DD which the bank refunded, there is no system for alerting other banks with the fraudster's ID etc, or even of preventing the fraudster from doing it again with the same bank.

"Easier just to refund it; most customers don't spot it in the first place, old boy. Much too much trouble alerting every other bank. Anyway, we refund them with their own money, what's the problem?"

I trusted British banks until a day in 1994 when my friendly business manager (Barclays) advised me to set up a deposit account to hold our cash, and transfer to the current account when needed. Sounded sensible, but he forgot to mention that each (daily) deposit had to go in via the current account and be transferred, for a fee, to the deposit account. To use it required transfer back to the current account, again for a fee. After a month or two of horrendous charges I remonstrated that his system was hideously expensive and taking most of our profits. His reply?

"*****, be your age. My job is to increase the Bank's profits, not yours."