Business banking news review: week ending 30 Oct 2014
If you’ve got a few quid squirreled away in a savings account or current account, beware – there are plenty of people out there looking to get it from you.
I know that sounds both vague and alarmist at the same time, but the truth is that attempts to separate you from your hard-earned money are increasing every day. The worst part is that some of the methods used are technically legal!
First there’s a decidedly illegal, but quite crafty new scam called number spoofing. Fraudsters take a telephone number of an official organisation like a personal or business bank account provider or even the police in order to dupe their victims into thinking they’re speaking with a trusted official. These scammers then try to persuade their victims into depositing their funds into a holding account, or simply just divulge their personal details to allow the criminals access to their banking provider. The fraudsters point out to their marks how the phone number they’re using matches an official one.
The Financial Fraud Bureau has been busy issuing warnings against trusting anyone who tries to get your personal details over the phone in this way. It points out that it’s not common practice for legitimate entities to use a simple phone number as official verification, and it urges Brits not to trust anyone trying to pull such a scam on them.
Meanwhile, it turns out that some payday loan providers are doing their best to hit their customers where it hurts by raiding their bank accounts. There could be as many as a million attempts every month on the part of payday lenders to get their grubby little paws on the contents of customers’ bank accounts, with some banks reporting as many as 600 complaints or more from their customers that payday lenders are trying to weasel their way in.
It’s a particular type of company that engages in the activity – a payday loan broker, not technically a lender itself. These firms ostensibly work on behalf of customers to match them with payday lenders directly, but hidden in the fine print of these brokers is an agreement that allows these brokers to charge anywhere from £50 to £75 for the privilege of matching a lender with a borrower.
This of course makes me absolutely sick. I hope the Financial Ombudsman Service gets wind of these bastards and shuts them down for good.