Monzo on BBC Radio 4 Money Box

I know there are lots of people who are really interested in how our AML and KYC works behind the scenes.

I therefore commend Moneybox at 12pm today on Radio 4 to you all! Hopefully there will be some interesting titbits in there :eyes:

It will be on iPlayer here :slight_smile:

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Hey Hugh, sorry for the amateur question but: what does AML and KYC stand for?

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Anti Money Laundering and Know Your Customer.

Basically it’s about ensuring compliance with various laws. Some more about KYC in the blog below

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Ahh of course, thanks!

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In brief.

£200m of people’s money was lost last year through ‘push fraud’ - a criminal impersonating a bank and duping someone into transferring money into a criminal’s account. Criminals are making it look like their number is the bank’s.

A couple called Sophie and Steve were duped into transferring £10k from their Co-op and Natwest accounts into another account as the “bank” said they had been compromised. At the moment, there’s no recall for transfer.

How do we prove the bank is calling? They ask us many questions to check who we are. Isn’t it fair that we are able to ask the same questions when our “bank” calls us?

People should never make a payment over the phone at the request of someone prorporting to be their bank.

The couple’s money ended up going into a Monzo account, so @natasha was interviewed.

She said that right now, wrong names do not trigger alarms bells. Names are not checked. This is industry wide.

MB: Why do banks ignore the name?

Natasha says it’s difficult to check the name and to get an exact match. Incorrect match rate would be very high.

MB: Isn’t it a false sense of security asking for names? This type of fraud is not uncommon.

Natasha says that Monzo can freeze accounts almost instantly. There are clever technical things that Monzo does such as machine learning and very advanced transaction monitoring. Monzo are always making improvements. Recent improvements have saved customers of other banks half a million pounds.

She goes on to say that Monzo is keen to talk to all banks to improve learning and data sharing, but there doesn’t seem to be much impetuous from other banks to talk openly about fraud.

MB: Who should be responsible then?

Richard Emery a financial advisor, and believes that liability is with Monzo. Monzo allowed that money to be moved from that account. He doesn’t believe that Monzo had a properly authenticated transaction request. It was inheritantly fraudulent because it came from a crook. This isn’t just a problem with Monzo, but all banks.

He’s concerned about new rules that are coming from the Payment Systems Regulator as it doesn’t show clear liability so no one will take responsibility. Second concern is the proposed “contingent reimbursement scheme” is run by the Financial Ombudsman.

Richard says that this whole issue is being debated in Parliament on Thursday - but what needs to happen is victims should be able to make a complaint against the receiving back. Banks are on notice to implement something called “Account name verification” which should help with these incidents.

typed up quickly so apologies for any mistakes in notation

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This is awesome, thanks for typing it all up @tomsr :raised_hands:

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Which bank did the fraudster transfer the funds from Monzo to??

Co-op and Natwest. Amended post to reflect.

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Thanks, and sadly I guess £10k is below the thresholds of the police being overly interested??

I’m sure this can’t be commented on, but the fraudster evidently got past KYC and any ‘machine learning’ protections. If the police aren’t interested, maybe make the fraudsters sign up video public :slight_smile:

Data Protection Act, can’t do it unfortunately.

She goes on to say that Monzo is keen to talk to all banks to improve learning and data sharing, but there doesn’t seem to be much impetuous from other banks to talk openly about fraud

Says the company who deletes every fraud-related post as if pushing the information underground is going to solve anything. Hint: security by obscurity never works for long. :wink:

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I’m really sorry you feel that we aren’t being transparent about this :disappointed_relieved: We do try and be as open as possible however, as mentioned in this thread, unfortunately there are some things we are not allowed to discuss publicly, even if we wanted to.

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