Friday 1 July 2022 11:39 PM Banks will be forced to reimburse ALL online fraud victims under new laws trends now
By Victoria Bischoff, Money Mail Editor
For years blameless fraud victims were routinely denied refunds.
Then in 2019, after a campaign by this newspaper, they were thrown a lifeline.
Major banks agreed to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct that requires firms to repay customers who have been preyed on by sophisticated scammers.
But this was only ever supposed to be a temporary solution while plans for proper regulation were thrashed out.
Yet three years later we are still waiting. Just half of victims tricked into transferring money to scammers were refunded by banks last year.
Meanwhile, the Financial Ombudsman, which deals with disputes between financial firms and customers, has seen complaints about fraud soar.
Tellingly, last year it ruled in favour of the consumer in around three-quarters of these cases. All too often banks are still trying to wriggle out of doing
