Head of fraud Ashley Hart said this will benefit everyone, not just TSB customers, and that the cash would be invested in several strands of work through local boroughs – including Lewisham, Bexley and the Royal Borough of Greenwich – and face-to-face police work.
“Lots of banks do this but our emphasis, which is different, is to do this locally. To support small to medium businesses on the high street, in partnership with the London Digital Security Centre, officers will be going door to door offering free, immediate tailored advice on fraud and safeguarding customers.”
The bank said this is a pilot and it is also allocating smaller pockets of cash to an innovation fund to support new ideas to combat fraud.
London targeted by criminals
More than £2m is lost to financial fraud every day in the capital with Met figures suggesting 3,500 Londoners are reporting fraud and cybercrimes each month with many more attacks going unreported or detected.
Superintendent Sean McDermid of the Met’s South East Basic Command Unit, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to work with the banking industry to make a real difference, not only to our communities in the South East but also our volunteers and wider workforce.”
Financial crime is often one strand carried out by organised crime groups involved in drug rings, human trafficking and terrorism. It is becoming increasingly challenging, following several highly complex and sophisticated attacks against banks in the last year, including against TSB.
TSB executive chairman, Richard Meddings added: “TSB’s experience shows the scale and risk of fraud in a digital age. Fraud is a serious and organised crime, and we want to hunt down the criminals targeting customers.
“That’s why we’ve put our learning into practice to work with the Met to help ensure fraud is a high-risk crime.”
Following TSB’s digital meltdown earlier this year, in June 1,300 TSB customers lost money after fraudsters exploited the IT problems as the bank saw 70 times the usual number of fraud attacks.
