Santander UK Plc · DRN-5830826

Complaint Mr and Mrs T complain that Santander UK Plc didn’t fairly reimburse them after they fell victim to a scam. Background The background to this complaint is known to all parties, so I will only summarise the key points here. In March 2023, Mr and Mrs T fell victim to an investment scam. Mr T had been approached by a company claiming to offer an investment opportunity involving speculation in foreign exchange. The operation appeared entirely legitimate, and Mr T proceeded to invest. Although he didn’t know it at the time, he wasn’t dealing with a genuine company but fraudsters. In total, he transferred £60,000 to the scammers. In July 2024, Mr T notified Santander that he had been the victim of a scam. It considered their claim under the terms of the Lending Standards Board’s Contingent Reimbursement Model Code (CRM Code). At that stage, it wasn’t satisfied that the circumstances met the definition of an authorised push payment (APP) scam but said it wished to pause making a decision pending further investigation. It sought to rely on a particular provision in the CRM Code – R3(1)(C). In August 2025, Santander accepted that Mr and Mrs T had indeed been the victims of an APP scam and confirmed they would be reimbursed under the CRM Code. However, Mr and Mrs T believed that, due to the lengthy delay in reaching this outcome, they should also be entitled to interest on the refunded amount. An Investigator considered the complaint and concluded that interest should be paid, calculated from the date Santander had declined their CRM Code claim. The Investigator also had concerns about Santander’s customer service, specifically that it had failed to keep Mr and Mrs T adequately informed throughout the process. She recommended an additional £200 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience caused. Santander accepted these recommendations. Mr T, however, disagreed with the Investigator’s position on interest. He felt interest should accrue from the dates he made the payments to the fraudsters, rather than from the date his CRM Code claim was declined. As Mr and Mrs T did not accept the Investigator’s view, the complaint has now been referred to me for a final decision. Findings 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’ve reached the same overall conclusion as the Investigator, and for broadly the same reasons. It may be helpful to set out the relevant considerations when assessing a complaint of this kind. As a starting point, the legal position is that a bank must generally process payments authorised by its customer, in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and the applicable account terms and conditions.

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However, that is not the end of the matter. There are, broadly speaking, two circumstances in which Santander could still be required to reimburse a customer even where the payments were properly authorised. First, Santander was a signatory to the CRM Code. Under that Code, firms must reimburse customers who fall victim to authorised push payment (APP) scams unless a specific exception applies. Second, banks are expected to monitor for account activity or transactions that appear unusual or out of character and may indicate an increased risk of fraud. Where such risks are identified, I would expect the bank to take appropriate protective steps. That might include displaying a warning during the payment journey, or in some circumstances pausing the payment and contacting the customer to discuss the situation more fully. In other words, Santander could be considered at fault in one of two ways: 1) It wrongly declined Mr and Mrs T’s claim for reimbursement under the CRM Code; or 2) It failed to take reasonable steps to prevent them from falling victim to the scam in the first place. The purpose of an interest award is to compensate customers for being deprived of their funds as a result of the bank’s error. Interest therefore runs from the date that error occurred. Santander has accepted it was at fault for reason (1), and it has calculated interest from the date it incorrectly declined the CRM Code claim. Mr and Mrs T would only be entitled to additional compensation if Santander was also at fault for reason (2) - that is, if it failed to identify and respond appropriately to unusual account activity that should have alerted it to the scam. In this case, although the payments were large, they were not sufficiently out of character for this account to expect Santander to have intervened. I therefore do not consider it was at fault on that basis. Mr T has said that a friend who fell victim to the same scam received interest from the date of the payments, and he does not understand why he is being treated differently. It is difficult to draw any conclusions without knowing the details of that person’s account history or their bank’s decision‑making. It may be that the friend’s transactions were more obviously unusual to the extent that their bank ought to have intervened. It might also be that their bank adopted a different approach to redress which resulted in a more favourable outcome for them. I appreciate why this feels unfair to Mr T. However, even if his friend was treated more favourably by his bank than I’d expect, it does not follow that Santander’s calculation in this case is anything other than fair and reasonable. Final decision For the reasons I’ve set out above, I find that Santander’s offer is fair and reasonable in all the circumstances and so I do not uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr T and Mrs T to accept or reject my decision before 16 April 2026. James Kimmitt Ombudsman

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