Not upheld: scam reimbursement - authorised push payment fraud complaint against NATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY

Decision detail

Summary

Miss P complained that NatWest failed to reimburse her after she fell victim to a romance scam and sent over £14,000 in international payments to a scammer between June 2024 and January 2026. NatWest declined reimbursement on the basis that the CRM Code does not apply to international payments and the transactions were not unusual or out of character for her account. The ombudsman found that while banks should monitor for unusual transactions as good practice, the payment pattern in this case—spread over 19 months with individual payments up to £1,000 and no escalating pattern—did not present sufficient red flags to require intervention. The ombudsman did not uphold the complaint, finding that NatWest acted fairly and reasonably and that the scammer, not the bank, was responsible for the loss.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and good industry practice standards for fraud prevention. While NatWest should have systems in place to monitor for unusual transactions, the ombudsman found that the individual payments were not sufficiently unusual or out of character to trigger intervention. The payments were spread over 19 months, the largest single payment was £1,000, there was no pattern of escalating amounts or multiple payments in one day, and the scammer had become a known and trusted payee by the time larger payments were made. Additionally, Miss P had previously made international payments, so this was not anomalous. The ombudsman concluded that nothing in the payment pattern should have alerted NatWest to fraud risk.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website