Bank of Ireland’s UK arm hit with £3.8m fine for fraud failures
The Bank of Ireland’s UK arm has been slapped with a hefty fine after failing to hit the deadline by over a year to implement an anti-fraud service.
The lender was hit with a £3.7m fine from the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) for missing the deadline by 14 months for a “vital” service that would send requests for confirmation of payee checks.
The missed deadline meant transactions for around 1.14m new payees did not have the safeguard, with payments totalling just shy of £7bn.
David Geale, managing director at the PSR, said: “Confirmation of payee is a vital tool to combat fraud and misdirected payments, giving people confidence that their money is going exactly where they intend.
“Bank of Ireland UK had plenty of time to put the system in place, missing the deadline by more than a year put its customers at increased risk of fraud.”
The Bank of Ireland was expected to have implemented the system by October 31 2023. The structure serves as an account name checking service, which protects customers when making payments and curbs authorised push payment (APP) scams – where fraudsters pretend to be an organisation to lure people into sending money.
Bank of Ireland follows Nationwide and Barclays regulatory hits
In accepting to settle at an early stage of the enforcement process, the firm did curb a hit of £5.4m as it qualified for a 30 per cent discount.
The Bank of Ireland UK said it “fully acknowledges and sincerely apologises for the delay in implementing send requests for confirmation of payee, which has been in place for all customers since January 2025.”
“The bank takes its regulatory obligations extremely seriously and regrets that this issue arose.”
Last year, Nationwide took home the biggest regulatory fine for the financial services sector with a £44m hit from the City watchdog after failing to flag failures in its financial controls.
Barclays was also fined £42m last year after failings in its financial crime risk management.
Meanwhile, digital bank Monzo was hammered with a £21m fine after “repeatedly” opening accounts for “high-risk” customers, who used 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, and even Monzo’s own address, as their address.