HL Partnership – education, technology and vigilance can stop email push payment scams

24 August 2018

HL Partnership, the UK’s leading privately owned mortgage and protection network, has taken steps to minimise the dangers of email push payment scams to unwary customers.

Last year UK bank customers lost over £236 million to fraudsters. Most of this fraud was due to poor security, using vulnerable email accounts, or by clicking on a seemingly innocent link in an email or website to download some malicious software to customers’ computers.

HL Partnership, which currently has over 250 AR firms, believes that it is important to be leading the fight against this kind of crime, which can have such a devastating effect on its victims.

According to Gavin Earnshaw, Compliance Director at HL Partnership, incidents in the mortgage sector, where customers are inadvertently sending funds to fraudsters on the back of believable emails, are on the rise.

He said, “We all believe that it will never happen to us, but in truth no one is completely immune to becoming a victim of fraud. This is particularly true when we are in the midst of that most stressful of situations - the house buying process. With so many requests for different documents and where we will be expected to transfer money at some point in the journey, it is easy to miss what looks like a credible but fraudulent request for money. Raising awareness is a key weapon in the fight against this kind of crime.

This is why at HL Partnership and our sister network, Mortgage Support Network, we have been proactive in making sure that our advisers are aware of the issues and, through them, hammer home the message to their customers of the dangers of responding automatically to requests for money.

We encourage our advisers to encrypt sensitive emails and make use of our advanced hlpCRM system to ensure customer and adviser communication and data transmission is secure. hlpCRM employs advanced security features within the Client Portal to create a safe gateway for advisers and clients to send and retrieve documentation, transmit actions and share messages.

We have put our advisers at the forefront of the fight to raise awareness of the issue with customers from the initial meetings. All training sessions and roundtable events include a cybercrime awareness segment in presentations.

We have also produced written material such as ‘Scam Alert’ leaflets and increased the visibility of the ‘Cyber Crime Awareness’ wording on data protection statements, product suitability reports and all email footers.”

Gavin added, “Only by being vigilant ourselves, making our customers more aware and using the best technology tools available, can we minimise the potential dangers to our customers and move to eradicate this particularly evil crime.”