Emma RadmoreThe Treasury Committee has described the proposals for the PSR to require banks and building societies to fully reimburse victims of APP scams where the loss is over £100 as “half baked”. The Treasury Sub-Committee on Financial Services had already queried the reason for the threshold, and the PSR has now revealed that nearly one quarter of APP scams are for less than £100. It said that it was aligning the threshold with the limit for credit card fraud that has not been reviewed since 1983.
The PSR had also been asked what “gross negligence” meant, in relation to its proposal that consumers who show gross negligence would not usually be reimbursed. It said it will clarify this as FOS begins to consider complaints. The Committee sees this as further delaying repayment.
Overall, Harriett Baldwin, Chair of the Treasury Committee, called on regulators to “get their skates on” to sort out all the criteria quickly, and said the Committee would keep up the pressure to prevent “dragged out or half-baked” implementation.
Meanwhile, FCA agreed that fraudulent transactions within the same bank should not miss out on compensation but said it needs to work with Treasury to get the powers to achieve this, and the BoE said it will develop plans on reimbursing high vale transactions such as payments made through CHAPS for house purchases. Finally, FOS said it was introducing a new banking team in the hope of speeding up complaints resolution, and said that average waiting times had dropped significantly to 3.7 months by the end of 2022.