Santander UK Plc · DRN-5687601

The complaint Mr O complains that Santander UK Plc failed to protect his banks accounts after he registered a Power of Attorney (POA) and the POA made a variety of payments without his knowledge. Mr O is being represented by a relative here but for ease I’ll only refer to Mr O below. What happened The details of this complaint are well known to both parties, so I’ve only provided a brief overview below. In 2023 Mr O’s wife sadly passed away and left him a significant estate. Mr O then was contacted by an estranged family member – I’ll refer to here as D. Mr O says that D coerced him into agreeing to a POA on his account in March 2024 which was then registered with the Office of Public Guardian (OPG) from July 2024 and registered with Santander around 12 September 2024. Mr O says that he was admitted to hospital around 01 August 2024 until around 11 October 2024 and that from July to September 2024 D started to make cash withdrawals from his account. Mr O says that payments totalling a little over £100,000 were then made from Mr O’s savings account to his current account, third parties and a Jewellery store. On 14 October 2024 a claim to Santander was raised by Mr O for the disputed payments on his account, after the POA had been registered with Santander, that he says was made by D without his knowledge or consent. Santander considered the claim but said it didn’t do anything wrong by allowing the payments to be made from the account. Unhappy with that response Mr O brought his compliant to this service. Our Investigator didn’t think the complaint should be upheld. She said that Santander wouldn’t have been able to uncover what was happening to Mr O’s account here because there was a POA registered. Mr O disagreed and asked for an Ombudsman’s review. He said that if he had been contacted by Santander he would’ve said the payments weren’t authorised. He also raised with Santander cash withdrawals that had been made on the account from 24 July 2024 until 11 October 2024. Santander considered the cash withdrawals and decided to offer Mr O a £6,700 refund of cash withdrawals from 24 July 24 to 16 September 2024. I was allocated the complaint and told both parties I was minded to uphold it. I said that Santander should’ve done more here to stop a £16,500 payment that was more than likely being made by D to a Jewellery store on 25 September 2024. And if it had done further checks on the validity of the payment and whether this was being made for Mr O’s benefit it would’ve uncovered that D was making the payments without Mr O’s knowledge. In total, I said I was minded to ask Santander to return £52,565 for the unauthorised spending on the

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savings account from 25 September 2024 and a further loss of £6,414 on the bank account on the until the fraud was reported on 14 October 2024. Santander responded to say that it didn’t agree with the reasons for my provisional findings but was willing to make an offer in line with my recommendations. Mr O didn’t agree with my initial findings. He said that from his estimation he had lost close to £150,000 from his account and that Santander should’ve taken action sooner here. If it had then the loss would’ve been stopped much sooner. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. To be clear if there’s a submission I’ve not addressed; it isn’t because I’ve ignored the point. It’s simply because my findings focus on what I consider to be the central issues in this complaint – that being whether Santander was responsible for Mr O’s loss. There are a lot of disputed payments to consider here, and I can see that from Mr O’s testimony he trusted D in early 2024. I note from Mr O’s testimony that he would occasionally allow D access to his account and to withdraw money on his behalf to pay for shopping. Although Mr O says that he didn’t allow D to make all the transactions that he did on the account this satisfies me that overall, he had allowed D access to his account and had given his authority to withdraw cash. This in turn built up a regular withdrawal history on Mr O’s account that over time gradually became day-to-day activity. From reviewing those transactions, the payments before the POA was registered with Santander in September 2024 weren’t sufficiently unusual here. When considering Mr O’s point that Santander could’ve intervened earlier in the disputed payments this would depend on whether or not the payments being made on Mr O’s account were sufficiently unusual for Santander to have considered that Mr O was likely the victim of fraud. So, I’ve looked at the previous transactions on the account to see if there was a sufficient change in the spending on the account. I’ve seen there was a £10,000 payment Mr O made internally to one of his accounts in the past, so he had made a large payment on his account in the previous twelve months from when the disputed payments started. There were also cash withdrawals that he would make in November 2023 and December 2023 from the account for around £200. The same amount would continue to be withdrawn in January 2024. I’ve seen that there was an increase in the number of cash withdrawals on the account in February and March 2024, but they were reasonably spread out and it wasn’t uncommon for cash to be taken from Mr O’s account. It’s also not unusual for account usage to change over time, so the increase in cash withdrawals to five or six a month wouldn’t have looked sufficiently unusual here. So, I don’t think the earlier payments before and around the time the POA was signed by Mr O (March 2024) would’ve seemed unusual to Santander at the time. Around the end of July and August 2024, Mr O ended up in hospital and was unwell. It was at this time that he lost track of his bank card. A claim was made to Santander for the cash withdrawals (which Santander says amounts to around £12,450) from July 2024 to October 2024 when the claim was first raised to Santander. Of those, Santander has offered to refund £6,700 which were the transactions made between 24 July 2024 and the date the POA was registered with the bank on 16 September 2024.

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Santander has now agreed to increase its offer for those transactions to consider the cash withdrawals on his account from the time Mr O went into hospital (24 July 2024) and the time claim was raised to the bank on 14 October 2024. I think that’s a fair offer in all the circumstances here for those cash withdrawals because it’s unlikely that Mr O would’ve continued to allow D access to his account whilst he was in hospital for a prolonged period. So, it’s more likely than not that those withdrawals were unauthorised. I’ve then considered the bank transfers and payments that were made from Mr O’s savings account and current account after the POA was registered in September 2014. I note that there were a lot of payments made from Mr O’s savings and current account between 16 September (POA logged with Santander) and 14 October 2024 when the abuse was raised to the bank. Santander says the £7,000 payment in the branch on 07 September 2024 would’ve received some scam advice and it intervened in a £10,000 payment from the savings account and spoke to the POA. I think that was reasonable in the circumstances, but I believe it’s worth highlighting the spending that continued on the savings account after that - in particular the spending in the jewellery store that started on 25 September 2024. A payment of £16,500 was made on 24 September 2024. A further payment was made the next day for £16,500 quickly followed by a £134 payment. I think it was reasonable for Santander not to have stopped the first payment here. It’s not unreasonable that a one-off larger payment will sometimes be made on an account. But by the time the second £16,500 was attempted on 25 September 2024 I think there was enough happening on the account that Santander should’ve been concerned about Mr O’s account being the victim of fraud. By that point his savings account had dropped from a balance of £137,682 on 12 September 2024 to £71,931. There had also been an increase in the velocity of cash withdrawals on the savings account very soon after a POA had been added to the account. It wasn’t unusual for Mr O to withdraw cash from his savings account but not every day. Santander would’ve also seen that there were three £10,000 payments from the savings account which were being authorised by the POA on the grounds of a ‘family gift’. I accept Santander had spoken to the POA on one of those payments, but it doesn’t change the fact the savings account had clearly experienced an unusual and suspicious change in spending since the POA had been registered. That coupled with the spending in the jewellery store (which in itself was around £69,000 in total) should’ve given Santander cause for concern that all of this spending may not have been for the benefit or with the permission of Mr O at the time. I accept that there was a POA on the account which had been registered with the OPG. So, although the payments are considered as authorised by a POA on the account, Santander should fairly and reasonably be monitoring their accounts to combat various risks including the misappropriation of their customer’s funds. And it did conduct some checks on one of the online payments around 21 September 2024 and blocked the card on 28 September 2024 and asked D who had POA to come into branch to discuss the large amount of cash withdrawals (according to the Bank’s notes). So, I’m satisfied Santander had some concerns about the spending on this account. Santander would’ve also been aware that according to the banks’ internal notes that Mr O was deaf in one ear, had suffered three strokes and dyslexia which meant he sometimes struggles to understand things. This means that Santander was on notice at the time that its customer was vulnerable. I think this adds further evidence that should’ve given Santander further cause for concern at the time.

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The combination of the above factors means I think Santander fairly and reasonably should have had further concerns about a potential risk to Mr O that they ought to have investigated at the time. And I think Santander should’ve taken steps to reach out to Mr O to satisfy itself that the money that was being spent was for his benefit. It could’ve put a stop on the account until it had spoken to Mr O. It then would’ve discovered that at the time of the payments Mr O was in hospital and hadn’t authorised such spending on his account. It could’ve also reached out to the OPG to raise concerns it subsequently would’ve had about the way the account was being run at the time. I think if Santander had taken those steps, then I think it would’ve discovered that it wasn’t Mr O who was spending the money on the account during that period of time. As a result, I’m satisfied the offer from Santander to refund any of the spending that Mr O didn’t give the POA permission to spend on both of his accounts from that £16,500 payment on 25 September 2024 is reasonable. The above means Santander is now offering Mr O a total of £58,979 (£52,565 from the savings account and £6,414 on the bank account) of unauthorised spending on his accounts. This doesn’t include the £7,573.70 that Santander recovered from one of the beneficiary accounts after the claim was raised. I appreciate Mr O feels he should have more of his money returned considering the total loss he has claimed for here (around £150,000). But I don’t think I can reasonably ask Santander to increase its offer. I’m satisfied that the earlier payments from February 2024 were likely authorised by Mr O when he allowed D access to his card. And that only the cash withdrawals after Mr O went into hospital in late July 2024 and the spending on his current and savings account from the second £16,500 on 25 September 2024 should be refunded here for the reasons I’ve explained above. I note Mr O has said that there were issues when raising the claim and that the service he received when he raised the claim via his representative caused him distress and inconvenience. I’ve taken that into account here. I’ve heard some of the calls that Mr O’s representative made throughout Santander’s investigation. I’m sure the representative was frustrated with Santander’s handling of the matter especially a few weeks after she raised the claim in a branch. But I’m satisfied this was more her frustration than it was Mr O’s at the time. I appreciate she would’ve needed to speak and feedback to Mr O about what was happening, but I think his distress and inconvenience was limited by the fact he was making the complaint via a representative here. Santander has added that in the event there is a successful recovery of Mr O’s money via a police investigation that he contacts the bank to make sure he isn’t benefitting from its offer to reimburse him. My final decision My final decision is that I uphold this complaint in part. Santander UK Plc must do the following; • Pay Mr O a further £58,979 Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr O to accept or reject my decision before 7 April 2026. Mark Dobson Ombudsman

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