His daughter complained to us in 2023 that the bank should have noticed the scam and alerted her father and the joint account holder, his wife. Zachariah's daughter also said the bank had failed to adequately protect her father's money.

Our investigation

The direct loss Zachariah suffered as a result of the bank’s alleged inaction exceeded the $350,000 limit on the size of claims we can consider. Zachariah's daughter asked whether the claim could be split up into the separate transactions of less than $350,000. We replied that the rules in our terms of reference prevented complainants from splitting a complaint into different parts to circumvent this limit, or from reducing the size of a claim to bring it within the scheme’s jurisdiction. We could not, therefore, consider the complaint.

Outcome

We were unable to consider Zachariah's complaint.