Not upheld: Fraud reimbursement (APP scams) complaint against Handelsbanken plc

Decision detail

Summary

Mr and Mrs B complained that Handelsbanken failed to protect them from financial harm when they sent £420,000 to a person (R) claiming to offer forex trading investment, which they later discovered was a scam. Handelsbanken did intervene by calling Mr B before processing the payment but failed to ask sufficient probing questions or provide scam warnings. The ombudsman found the payment was significantly out of character and that Handelsbanken should have intervened more thoroughly, but concluded that even better intervention would not have prevented the payment, as Mr and Mrs B were genuinely convinced of the investment's legitimacy. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman acknowledged that while Handelsbanken should have intervened more thoroughly during the call with Mr B (by asking more probing questions and providing scam warnings), any such intervention would likely have been ineffective. This is because Mr and Mrs B were genuinely convinced of the investment's legitimacy, had met R in person, signed a contract, and Mr B was confident in his investment decision. The ombudsman also found insufficient evidence to definitively prove a scam had occurred, noting that a failed investment does not necessarily constitute fraud, and that Mr and Mrs B were aware they were sending money to R as an individual rather than to a company.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website