Not upheld: failure to intervene in compulsive spending / inadequate monitoring of vulnerable customer complaint against J.P. Morgan Europe Limited trading as Chase

Decision detail

Summary

Mr B complained that Chase failed to protect him from compulsive spending of approximately £2,814 between July and October 2025, arguing the high-frequency transaction pattern should have alerted Chase to his vulnerability. Chase did not uphold the complaint, noting Mr B had authorised all payments and did not request intervention. The ombudsman found Chase had no reasonable cause to intervene because the account remained in credit, individual transactions were not fraud-indicative, and Mr B never disclosed the compulsive spending issue to Chase. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Chase had no reasonable cause to intervene because: (1) the account remained in credit with no financial difficulty indicators; (2) individual transaction amounts and patterns did not suggest fraud; (3) transactions were made from recognised devices; (4) FCA guidance on monitoring for unusual activity applies in the context of customer engagement and fraud detection, not compulsive spending; (5) Mr B did not contact Chase about the compulsive spending or request a merchant block; and (6) the spending pattern, while frequent, was not so unusual as to trigger Chase's systems or warrant manual intervention.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website