Metro Bank PLC · DRN-6152145

The complaint Mr H complains that Metro Bank PLC unfairly refuses to refund him money he lost in an investment scam. Mr H is being represented, but for ease of reference, I’ll just refer to Mr H. What happened Mr H says he was looking for an investment and he found a website for an investment company that interested him, so he left his contact details. He had not invested previously but he thought the website looked highly professional and he conducted further research by checking online reviews. He received a call back and he was persuaded to invest. Mr H was asked to download and install remote access software, which he did and some limited trading was carried out on his behalf for a few weeks and this generated reasonable returns. Around 14 July 2025, he was persuaded to invest substantially more. He says he was persuaded to apply for loans with the aim of investing the money he was loaned. He took out a loan on 14 July 2025 and another on 17 July 2025, both for £20,000 and the money was received into his Metro Bank account. The money was then sent on to his account with a different bank and was then moved on again, eventually being paid to an account he later discovered was controlled by scammers. Mr H says he was approved for other loans but decided against going forward with these loans and did not transfer further money on to the scammers. The investment account balance appeared to be growing but when Mr H came to withdraw money from the investment account, he says he was met with obstacles, such as further payments being required before any sums could be withdrawn. It was at this point Mr H came to realise he had been the victim of a scam and he informed Metro Bank he had been scammed when making a complaint to Metro Bank, on 3 October 2025. Mr H made the following payments from Metro Bank as part of this scam: Date Amount Payment type Destination 14/07/2025 £20,000 Faster payment Own bank account 17/07/2025 £20,000 Faster payment Own bank account Mr H considers Metro Bank ought to have done more to protect him from falling victim to this scam. He says the payments on 14 and 17 July 2025 were not typical for his account, particularly as they followed two loans being deposited into the account. The payments were sent to a newly created beneficiary, which was also unusual for Mr H’s account. Mr H believes the payments were sufficiently out of character and suspicious that Metro Bank should have intervened and asked him questions before allowing the payments to go ahead. If Metro Bank had intervened, he considers the scam could have been prevented because probing questions would have revealed information that would have been of real concern to Metro Bank. Metro Bank says Mr H did not lose money from his Metro Bank account because his money

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was sent on to another account he controlled, rather it says it was lost from one of his other accounts when it was paid from there to the scammers. It doesn’t consider the payments were suspicious or that it should have intervened. In any event, it says Mr H was provided with an effective warning when he set up this payee. It adds that it was not aware of any vulnerabilities Mr H had at the time. One of our investigators considered Mr H’s complaint, but he didn’t uphold it. He said he thought the first payment was unusual and ought to have prompted Metro Bank to intervene. As part of his investigation, the Investigator listened to recordings of calls between Mr H and his other bank. These calls took place on 17 and 18 July 2025, when Mr H was trying to send money onwards to his investment account. The Investigator noted that Mr H had provided his bank with inaccurate information in response to some of the questions it had asked him. The Investigator thought that if Metro Bank had intervened, Mr H would, most likely, have provided similarly inaccurate answers. He said it appeared Mr H had been coached by the scammers about how to answer questions from his banks. In those circumstances, he thought it was unlikely that intervention from Metro Bank would have been effective. Mr H did not accept the Investigator’s assessment. He reiterated that Metro Bank should have intervened to ask him questions about the payments. Intervention was particularly necessary given that he was vulnerable. He said the intervention from Mr H’s other bank was general and limited and did not mean Metro Bank shouldn’t also have intervened. He says he answered several questions honestly and he was under significant pressure. With appropriate and meaningful questions, it is more likely than not that he would have reconsidered the payment and delayed it long enough for the scam to be exposed. Mr H asked for his complaint to be passed to an ombudsman for a decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I’m not upholding Mr H’s complaint. While I understand this will come as a disappointment to Mr H and I am conscious of the impact this cruel and distressing scam has had on him, I’m not persuaded that I can fairly conclude that Metro Bank is responsible for his losses. I say this because I don’t consider further intervention would have uncovered the scam. I’ll explain why. In broad terms, the starting position is that Metro Bank is expected to process payments and withdrawals that a customer authorises it to make, in accordance with the accounts terms and conditions and with the Payment Services Regulations (PSRs). It isn’t in dispute that Mr H authorised these payments. Metro Bank had an obligation to process the payments, but that isn’t the end of the story. I’ve taken into account the regulator’s rules and guidance; relevant codes of practice, along with what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time. Having done so, I consider Metro Bank should have fairly and reasonably been on the lookout for the possibility of Authorised Push Payments scams (amongst other things) at the time, and intervened if there were clear indications its customer might be at risk. Metro Bank does have a difficult balance to strike in how it configures its systems to detect unusual activity that might indicate its customers are a higher risk of fraud. It would not be reasonable or possible for Metro Bank to intervene in every transaction it processes. I would expect intervention to be proportionate to the circumstances of the transaction.

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In Mr H’s case, I consider Metro Bank should have intervened in both transactions and should have asked him probing questions about those payments. I say this because the payments were large in their own right, they were not typical for Mr H’s account, they were made to a newly established beneficiary, and they were made shortly after loans were paid into the account. While Metro Bank says the payments were made to another of Mr H’s accounts, by July 2025, it would have been aware of the prevalence of scams involving transactions between accounts controlled by the same customer. So, I do not consider the fact the payments were being made to another of Mr H’s accounts should have satisfied Metro Bank that there was no risk here. In view of the size of the payments and the other risk factors mentioned above, I consider person to person contact, either by telephone or messaging through a banking application, would have been suitable forms of intervention. Metro Bank should have asked Mr H probing questions to establish whether he was at risk of financial harm from fraud. However, like the Investigator, I’m not persuaded that such intervention would have uncovered the scam and prevented Mr H’s losses. When Mr H’s other bank called him on 17 July 2025 it asked him a number of questions about the payment. He initially told his bank the payment was being made to send money to different accounts abroad but when asked for further information, he told his bank that he was making the payment to do some trading. His bank established that Mr H was making the payment to a platform that traded commodities, foreign currency and stocks. He gave his bank some inaccurate information, for example he said he had not been asked to download any remote access software and he had not been asked to mislead the bank. But during the call, Mr H said he was now a bit nervous about the payment and his bank asked whether he would like to make further checks. It suggested carrying out some more research and checks before making the payment and Mr H said he would think it over and call back. In a second call with his bank that same day, he said he’d made some checks and now he did not want to go ahead. He said he did not know whether this trading platform was genuine, he asked HSBC whether it had heard of the platform and his bank said it had not. He said he did not know what was genuine and what was not. He said it all seemed a bit too good to be true so he was not going to proceed. On the one hand, Mr H provided his bank with inaccurate information, which made it harder for his bank to determine whether he was being scammed. On the other, he did answer some questions accurately and he was not so completely taken in by the scammers that he simply decided to go ahead. He was clearly cautious and aware of the possibility this might be a scam. He seems to have considered it, weighed it up and decided not to proceed. However, Mr H then messaged the scammers and said he had made a ‘mistake’ and had told his bank the payment was for trading, so his bank would not release the money. I conclude from this that Mr H had been told to give his bank a different payment purpose, otherwise there would be no mistake in telling his bank the real purpose of the payment. Mr H confirmed to us that he had been told by the scammers to mislead his bank and was told that banks do not like investments. The messages Mr H exchanged with the scammers are quite aggressive in tone and indicate that Mr H spoke to the scammers by telephone. He says he was persuaded to continue. On 18 July 2025, Mr H attempted to make another payment from his bank to the scammers. In a call on 18 July 2025, his bank asked for some further detail about the payment. He said he was sending it to his account with an Electronic Money Institution to put in multiple accounts abroad in different currencies. He was asked if anyone guided him on how to answer their questions. He said no, but the evidence suggests he had been told how to answer his bank’s questions. For example, in the call he said he was making the payment

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because he wanted to send the money to multiple accounts in different currencies, which appears to have been the answer he had been told to provide in his original call with his bank. He was also asked whether he had been asked to download anything to share screens and he said no, but he had been asked to do that and he had downloaded remote access software. His bank was satisfied with his answers and made the payment. While I understand that no two telephone calls will be the same, I consider the evidence from the calls between Mr H and his other bank is likely to be the best evidence about how Mr H might have responded if Metro Bank had intervened. My starting position is that the evidence suggests Mr H was told to mislead his banks about the purpose of the payments, about having downloaded remote access software and about being told to mislead his banks. It is also clear that he followed this advice and tried to give inaccurate answers in the first call on 17 July and in the call on 18 July. That makes it difficult for me to conclude that intervention from Metro Bank is likely to have succeeded in uncovering the scam, since it is likely Mr H would have given it misleading information too. I have considered that Mr H clearly had some doubts about this investment, for example he said that the investment seemed too good to be true. Mr H’s bank was also able to raise enough doubt in Mr H’s mind for him to cancel one of the payments, which suggests it is possible an intervention from Metro Bank might have worked. It is possible that if Metro Bank had intervened and had intervened with more probing questions than his other bank, or had followed-up information that the other bank did not, the scam might have been uncovered. For example, the other bank did not ask how he had heard about the investment, which might have been an obvious line of enquiry. Mr H was encouraged to check that the payment was going to who he thought it should be going to, but he was not told to check the FCA website. He was told he should carry out further due diligence, but there was little explanation about what that meant and he was not warned about fake investment and trading websites. So, had Metro Bank intervened, and asked probing questions it is possible it might have done a better job and uncovered the scam. But on balance, I’m not persuaded that’s more likely than not. Ultimately, the intervention from Mr H’s other bank wasn’t successful because Mr H withheld some key pieces of information, contacted the scammers again and was persuaded to make a payment the next day. He was also persuaded to provide further misleading information to his bank when making that payment. He did this despite the doubts he had and despite the intervention from his other bank. He told us the scammer was very persuasive and had told him that everything was okay and on that basis, he decided to go ahead. I do not fault Mr M for having been taken in by a sophisticated scam and I accept his evidence that the scammers were very persuasive and he felt under pressure to make the payments. But, on balance, while this is a finely balanced case, I’m not persuaded that if Metro Bank had intervened and asked Mr H probing questions, that he would have answered them more accurately than he had answered his other bank. Nor am I persuaded he would have given Metro Bank sufficient reason to think that the payments were being made as part of a scam. On that basis, I’m not persuaded I can fairly say that Metro Bank is responsible for Mr H’s loss. My final decision I don’t uphold Mr H’s complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr H to accept or

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reject my decision before 3 April 2026. Greg Barham Ombudsman

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