A company that fell victim to an impersonation scam felt their bank could have done more to protect them.
What happened
A construction company’s accounts manager got an email from his director asking for a payment to be made to someone named in the email. The director was away but it wasn’t unusual for him to request payments this way and the email came from his genuine email address. The accounts manager thought nothing of it, went ahead and made the payment.
The next week, when the director returned from his trip, the scam came to light. The company called its bank, which contacted the recipient bank. The recipient’s account was empty.
The company felt their bank could have done more to help prevent the loss, so brought their complaint to us.
What we said
The company was not a micro-enterprise so the transaction wasn’t covered by the CRM Code. Even so, we wanted to check whether the bank could have done more to spot the scam and prevent it from happening.
When we investigated the complaint, we saw the payment wasn’t unusual. Many similar payments were made quite regularly from the account. Also, although there was a ‘confirmation of payee’ check, the fraudster had given the correct payee’s name. So, the result was a ‘match’.
Overall, we felt the bank hadn’t made any errors or omitted anything. Therefore, we concluded it wouldn’t be fair to ask the bank to reimburse the company.