Not upheld: failure to prevent fraud/scam complaint against National Westminster Bank Public Limited Company (NatWest)

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs A lost over £8,000 to an investment scam between April and June 2025, making four transfers to overseas accounts. She complained to NatWest, arguing the bank should have prevented the payments. The ombudsman found that while NatWest has duties to monitor for fraud, the individual payments were not large, were spread over time, and the account had no prior payment history to compare against. As the payments were not sufficiently indicative of a scam, NatWest had no obligation to intervene, and the complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while NatWest has a duty to monitor for fraud and scams, intervention is only warranted when payment size, destination, or pattern is sufficiently indicative of a scam. In this case, the individual payments were not large, were spread over time, the account had no prior payment history to compare against, and the payments were not to cryptocurrency exchanges (the predominant scam type at the time). Therefore, there was nothing that should reasonably have triggered NatWest's fraud monitoring systems or indicated the customer was being scammed.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website