Not upheld: failure to identify and intervene in problem gambling spending; lack of proactive monitoring complaint against National Westminster Bank Public Limited Company (NatWest)

Decision detail

Summary

Mr O complained that NatWest failed to identify and intervene in gambling-related spending on his account between January 2025 and April 2025. NatWest initially closed the complaint due to a signature mismatch, but later investigated and found no evidence of wrongdoing. The ombudsman did not uphold the complaint, finding that Mr O had not previously notified NatWest of his gambling problem and that the account activity, while involving significant gambling transactions, was not unusual given Mr O's established pattern of high-frequency payments and his ability to maintain the account in credit. The ombudsman concluded that NatWest had no reasonable basis to intervene, as the transactions were not obviously fraudulent or indicative of financial difficulty from the bank's perspective.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the principle that Payment Service Providers are expected to process authorized payments in accordance with Payment Services Regulations and account terms. The key finding was that Mr O had not notified NatWest of his gambling problem before raising the complaint, and NatWest's records confirmed no such notification. The ombudsman assessed whether NatWest should have identified the problem through account monitoring, considering three potential indicators: fraudulent transactions, financial difficulties, or unusual account activity. The ombudsman found that: (1) the gambling transactions were not obviously unusual given Mr O's established pattern of high-frequency payments; (2) some transactions were to overseas entities that NatWest could not identify as gambling-related; (3) the account showed no signs of financial difficulty as Mr O regularly maintained a credit balance; and (4) while there was excessive activity on specific dates in late April, even intervention would likely have been unsuccessful given Mr O's compulsion to gamble and the fact that payments were to a previously-used payee. The ombudsman concluded that from NatWest's perspective, based on how the account was operated, there was insufficient basis to identify that Mr O was experiencing financial difficulties or that intervention was warranted.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website