Make banks say how often they refund fraud victims

Banks should be forced to declare how often they reimburse customers who are victims of fraud, the TSB boss has said.

Banks should display their reimbursement rate to help end the “victim-­blaming approach” currently taken by the sector, its chief executive, Debbie Crosbie, said. TSB, which began to guarantee customers against fraud losses two years ago, said all companies should protect their customers against losses.

The bank has also called for social media websites and search engines to take down scam adverts and fake influencer endorsements before customers see them. It wants web hosting companies, social media sites and search engines to vet advertisers and also to report the volume of content they remove and how quickly they do it.

TSB said it reported thousands of illegal adverts a month but many remained live for weeks before being removed. Investment scams, which often use fake sites to offer attractive returns, cost savers £135m last year, according to UK Finance, the banks’ trade body. In 2020 there was £479m of “push payment fraud”, where people are conned into sending money to criminals.