Our investigation

Pierce said the bank should compensate him for his loss because he had been the innocent victim of a scam. He said the bank should have noticed the bank account number had changed and checked with him before sending the funds. We explained that a bank’s role is to pay the funds according to the instructions its customers provide, and there is no obligation on a bank to verify whether those instructions are correct before processing the transfer. 

Outcome

We were unable to uphold this complaint because the bank had met its obligations by paying the funds according to the instructions.