Financial crime must be police priority, says BBA

The Home Office should set a new priority for the police to tackle the financial crime which funds further lawlessness on UK streets, British Bankers’ Association chief executive said today.

HM Revenue and Customs has also breached its duty of care in dealing with its customers over the recent loss of their personal data and the banks will seek recompense if it results in financial fraud, Mrs Knight told the BBA’s fifth Annual Conference on Financial Crime.

“Today the importance of financial crime and the need to avoid it is high up the agenda of individuals, the authorities and the banks themselves. Few can have failed to recognise that the millions and millions of individuals’ personal financial data that was lost by the HMRC not only has taken some weeks for them to report to those who need to know – the individuals and the banks – but that it is a breach of duty of care which would not be countenanced in the private sector.

“The industry has committed and continues to commit to protect its customers from suffering any financial loss as a consequence. We are also hoping that the data will be found. Nevertheless, the industry has informed HMRC that it will be looking for recompense should any bank suffer financial loss as a consequence.

“Looking at the wider context in which this unacceptable lack of sensible data protection took place, it is clear that Government has not yet accepted properly the case for making fraud and financial crime a priority for law enforcement in its own right. As an industry we have argued - and continue to argue forcibly - that given the proven links between financial crime and other types of criminality such as drugs and people trafficking and terrorism, the police’s performance framework has to have financial crime as a high agenda item. Resources allocated by government to law enforcement to tackle both money laundering and fraud risks are on the decline. Efforts to reduce fraud and money laundering are however essential, not just from the proprietary position of the industry (that it flags the UK as a good place to do business), but also because it cuts off the funding for the other types of criminality and threats that we all see around us.

“It is quite extraordinary that the industry does so much on anti-money laundering, on fraud prevention and on identifying suspicious transactions, and yet this doesn’t feature among the priorities the police has been given by the Home Office.”