HSBC has announced that all external fraud committed in relation to the group, its customers and partners will be allowed from July 1st 2025. The bank has been automatically refunding all retail and business customers who have been victims of fraud for the past 2 years but its never been an official policy until now.
It’s simply no longer cost effective
Newsishy spoke to customer relations head Edith Nobleston who said “HSBC has been proactive in combating fraud for decades, over the past 5 years we have spent billions of pounds of shareholder money to fight these fraudsters and on top of that billions more refunding our customers. It’s simply no longer cost effective to continue that strategy. So the decision was made to stop all investigations into fraudulent actions and just refund our customers what they lose. This will save our shareholders an estimated 2.6 billion pounds a year.”
Opportunities to a certain demographic
When we suggested the new policy will cause fraud to rise for the banking group she replied “Oh we realise that but that is not a concern, the maths say that however much is stolen it is far more cost effective to just let it go and refund, as well as the savings made on not investigating there will also be massive reduction on salaries of the investigators themselves, the legal costs of prosecution and the advertising warning customers of the dangers they face.”
We asked if this is now a free for all for anyone to break the law with HSBC “I wouldn’t say that, you’d have to know how to commit the frauds in the first place so for the average customer or business nothing will change. It does offer opportunities to a certain demographic though, for instance if you are a HSBC shareholder who also owns an account and can hack you can make an absolute shittonne of cash from all directions. Fill your boots” she said.
