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Aviva ignored signs of financial abuse by sibling and supported by FOS


Titchytitch
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@BankFodder thank you for the detailed piece- i spoke to someone on the phone so don't have it in writing

but it went on the lines of the FOS decision and wanted to know my rights and what happens if i reject the decison-

 

this was pretty much the same day i got the decision and well before i came across your group

so wanted to see if their response was valid i don't think it is i get the sense ive been fobbed off.

 

Nonetheless i am ready to get this nipped in the bud with your

support guidance and help guys much appreciated :) 

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I'm afraid there anybody you go to about this will fob you off. It's a bit too complicated and too messy for most people's taste.

You really need serious police involvement – as your brother has committed an offence under the fraud act 2006 – probably section 2.

If there could be a crime reference number and an arrest – and even a prosecution – a successful prosecution – then that would be enormously helpful.

I'm afraid that this will be down to you to contact the police. Of course Aviva should do it – but they won't. You will have to bring pressure to bear on the police and your list of fraudulent accesses to your credit file and attempts to get insurance and loans et cetera will all count as very good evidence.

You need to make sure that this is fully documented as possible – and of course keep copies for your own file as well as giving it to the police.

After that, as I said, we need to try and get some abuse organisations to comment on the setting up of the contract.

For this, and we will have to agree a set of facts to present to them and we should put something together really when we have got more information from the SAR and the FOIA request. In the meantime, you could certainly start pressing the police and alleging fraud under the fraud act 2006.
If any police try to say that this is a civil matter – then tell them that they are wrong. Tell them that it is clearly contrary to section 2 of the fraud act – but then come back here and let us know.

Please don't hold your hopes up too high. This will be hard work, it will take a long time – and there's I see no guarantee that it will be successful. You again have to make most of the running yourself. All we can do is get some enthusiastic support and feed you ideas

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Bankfodder - I understand.  I see Aviva as the victims of fraud and the fraudster is brother Z.  The OP appears to be an entirely innocent and unknowing third party.  I can understand why Aviva have involved her, but upon being made aware of the facts they should have left her alone and apologised for having allowed this to happen in the first place.

 

I still can't understand how on earth the FOS can have come to the view that Aviva have treated the OP fairly and reasonably?  I'd like to see them have to justify their decision on the facts as we know them.

 

(I still wonder whether the original insurance policy purchased by the OP in 2015 has clouded the view of the FOS).

 

I'm inclined to agree with BF that the police should be involved as - on the face of it - this is a very serious criminal offence and appears to form part of a prolonged and deliberate pattern of criminal behaviour (and victimisation of the OP).  And, of course, police involvement is more likely to help than hinder the OP's case.

 

The only issue I see for the OP is whether police involvement is likely to be a problem from the point of view of future family relationships and bad feeling?

 

I also agree that as much capital and leverage as possible should be made out of Aviva's hypocrisy concerning domestic/economic abuse/safeguarding.

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@BankFodder thank you i will keep you posted with regards to the police visit on weds @Manxman in exile our relationship broke down nearly 2yrs ago when he revealed his true colours by stopping payment of the loan and then reversing premiums back from aviva in the january of 2020  the FOS has had my complaint for over a year now

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I quite agree that it is Aviva which is the victim of fraud here. But like all of these companies – mobile phone companies whose customers have their phone stolen abroad or their Sim cards cloned and then decide to treat their customers as the people in debt rather than themselves as the victim. Just like the banks whose customers have their cash cards stolen or cloned, the banks prefer to treat their customers as in debt and refuse to consider themselves as victims.

I quite agree that Aviva are victims – that they find that the easiest route is simply to call the money back from the person they consider to be their customer –

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I completely agree.

The trouble is that when these organisations make these decisions – the bank, Aviva, the FOS – they entrench themselves and despite glaring evidence, they prefer to close ranks and to protect themselves.

It's corrupt and generally speaking there is very little that ordinary people can do about it. But if we are steady and methodical and try to gather together the necessary information, we may well find that we can put a case together eventually to challenge Aviva for their unfair treatment of you.

An investigation – and eventually a charging of your brother for fraud will help enormously.

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 @BankFodder I've received another email from the FOS to acknowledge receipt

 

I feel we will have to put a response together whilst rejecting the decision so they have it on file as I don't think the SAR will come back in time  

 

Please see email below that has been resent 

 

Your complaint about Aviva Insurance Limited

The ombudsman made a final decision about your complaint. I’ve enclosed the final decision, which we previously sent you.

We’d appreciate if you could acknowledge receipt letting us know you’ve received it.

Please take note of the the timescales to respond to the final decision, this is listed in the covering letter and previous email we sent below.

We look forward to hearing from you
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You don't need to respond to this – as long as you meet the deadline for declining the decision. However, it's up to you – and I don't suppose it will do any harm simply to say that you have acknowledged and you are considering the situation.

 

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I am assuming that you've already sent them the freedom of information request – yes?

However I've had another thought and I think it might be useful to acknowledge their message and say to them that you have received their decision and you are considering the situation but to help you consider the situation you would like them to provide you with details of any domestic or economic or financial abuse policies which they have implemented and also to know about their interaction with any abuse organisations.

Unfortunately the FOI deadline is after the deadline for accepting or declining their decision. It would be nice to have the policy in advance – and so may be a nice little note and asking for this information might produce something.
I doubt it – but you may as well try and it will be interesting to have something on file which has remained unanswered.

Do this even if you have sent the FOIA request.

Have you sent the FOIA request?

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@BankFodder some useful points from citizens advice what do you make of it ? 

 

Further to our conversation on the phone today I’ve written this email to go over the points of advice you asked for.

The first related to wanting advice about the court procedure if you decide to challenge Aviva. There is information available on the Citizens Advice website here that can be of help, particularly as relates to small claims and sources of support: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/. I believe the time limit for a money claim like this matter would be 6 years from when you first received the default letter, which you mentioned was January 2020. For detailed advice about court procedures I recommend speaking to Support Through Court, by booking an appointment from this webpage: https://www.supportthroughcourt.org/locations/leeds/.

In brief, though, the court application usually begins with you filling out a claim form and lodging it with the correct court, and sending a copy to the defendant. In your case it may be that Aviva is the claimant and you are the defendant. As this case deals with a sum of money under £10,000, it would likely be lodged in the small claims civil court, and so at each subsequent stage of the court procedure, the court itself takes management of the case and sends you forms to fill out and gives instructions. Nevertheless due to the nature of your case, it may be that you would need a solicitor to manage the case and to gather relevant evidence. Costs, fees and timescales are all factors you need to take into consideration. As the legal advice you received was that the firm wouldn’t take on your case, this may indicate most solicitors would feel the case against Aviva was too risky for you. I’m not sure if you explored the possibility of legal action against your brother, but this may also be an option to discuss with support through court, perhaps to claim back any money you may be required to pay to Aviva.

The second point was about communicating with Aviva about their failures of due diligence. If you are considering legal action it is probably best not to communicate with them outside of managed court proceedings until such a time as you have taken advice, ruled out action or the action has concluded, as any communications between you could be used as evidence. Once you have made this decision please feel free to book an appointment with Citizens advice and we will be happy to support you in writing a letter of complaint.

The third point was about what rights you have as regards rejecting the ombudsman’s decision and with dealing with Aviva. You are entitled to reject the ombudsman’s decision but the only avenue for doing so is through court proceedings. Further negotiations with Aviva may be more difficult as they can point to the Ombudsman’s decision. You could ask them to extend their stay on collecting the debt while you consult legal advice. If you want to make a complaint about the handling of the ombudsman’s investigation, such as about their not speaking to you directly when investigating, visit this webpage for information on how to lodge a complaint: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/service-standards/service-complaints.

The fourth point is about if there is anything you can do about the newly discovered outstanding loans taken out in your name. You said you are meeting with the police tomorrow to discuss these. The police may give you advice on what steps you or they can or will take. If they advise you to communicate with the companies yourself we would be happy to help with drafting a generic letter that you could modify to send to each of the companies in turn. If the loans become debts and they begin to contact you, you can send them Prove It letters. We would be happy to provide assistance at this stage also.

The fifth point is about organisations that can give you advice about financial domestic abuse.
Victim Support at https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/crime-info/types-crime/domestic-abuse/ provide a confidential support line to victims of domestic abuse and include financial domestic abuse in their remit. https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/ offer a specialist service for victims of economic abuse. You may also want to use the https://www.mind.org.uk/ website for more information about mental health resources.

I tried to look into whether there was anything you could do now to prevent your brother from being able to take out further fraudulent loans in the future. As you suspected he was managing to do it by having obtained copies of your personal and financial details, I recommend speaking to your bank and informing them you have been the victim of identity fraud. They may investigate using their own processes and take steps to protect your account from fraud. You also should consider applying for CIFAS Protective Registration, which should prevent other lenders agreeing further loans without doing additional checks with yourself first. For more information please see this webpage: https://www.cifas.org.uk/pr. CIFAS have further advice on steps to take when you are the victim of impersonation here: https://www.cifas.org.uk/services/identity-protection/victim-of-impersonation

 
 
 
 
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Well it's good of them to take the trouble to put this together for you. I think all of the advice is something that we understand completely and doesn't contribute at all.

Their last paragraph is useful if you haven't already contacted your bank or CIFAS. I don't think we suggested that step and maybe we should have done.

Other than that, I recommend waiting until we get FOIA disclosures and SAR disclosures – although we will provide a list of points for the FOS to put on file – but as citizens advice of said – and is we have already said, you won't actually be able to object or change the FOS decision

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I am CIFAS registered I registered with them in Feb 20 and had a notice of correction placed on my account.  

 

He sent up a direct debit with RSPCA as he had my bank emails from when he use to do a bank transfer into my account , I advised the police and they told me to wet up a new account which I did .

 

I've been asked by the ombudsman to accept or reject the decision they have made so I asked about my rights if I rejected . Obviously when I reject I think we all agreed that we will send a list of points for the rejection so they have it on file 

 

I was thinking the abuse sites hes provided are useful to speak to them re how this Co treat was set up and how it equates to domestic and financial abuse @BankFodder

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I quite agree about contacting the abuse sites – but I think we need to get more information. Considering how long it's all gone on, I don't think there's a huge hurry and we need to be slow and steady and methodical about gathering information.

I suggest that once we get more information – FOIA and SAR, we will understand more and we can then put together a letter to the various abuse organisations and simply asked them whether the kind of scenario where are describing would ring bells to somebody who should be aware of controlling behaviour by family member.

That's just be cautious.

If you the fact that you are CIFAS registered et cetera – I don't think that the citizens advice letter adds anything at all useful.

 

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@BankFodder I had booked the citizens advice prior to discovering your site so I thought I'd see what else they might be able to add to help.us 

I think my concern is once I reject the ombudsmans decision the default letters will start arriving again and how I will manage that I don't mind you taking the lead like you have done and I'll do the running etc 

Thank you for taking your time reading the Citizens Advice I just put it up so you were I the loop thanks hun x

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On 25/04/2021 at 10:11, Titchytitch said:

@BankFodder my draft letter for the FOIA please advise?

 

Dear Financial Ombudsman Services Ltd,

 

I am writing in regard to your Freedom Information Request. Could you please disclose information regarding your investigators forecast productivity. What is an investigators actual average productivity in terms of general casework closures per week? Please could you provide the answer for each year since 2019/20 and 2020/21?

Also, could you kindly disclose any policies that you have relating to domestic or economic financial abuse, notes or minutes of any discussions that have taken place internally and any notes or discussions that have taken place with any external body or organisation on the subject of domestic , financial or economic abuse.

If you do have the policies in place , what training is given to case workers, managers and adjudicators to identify these issues or signs in cases handled by themselves.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

 

Just seen this but I think this will almost certainly be exempted under section 12 . In my view the request is far too broad for FOS to be able to respond to with without exceeeding the £450 cost limit on compliance. In other words searching for, retrieving and collating the information would be too expensive and an authority can refuse the entire request on that basis.. You need to narrow the scope of the request significantly.

 

 

 

 

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52 minutes ago, cjcregg said:

 

Just seen this but I think this will almost certainly be exempted under section 12 .

 

I don't know why that that FOIA request passed me by – and I agree, it's absolutely too broad.

I hope it hasn't been sent.

I don't understand all the questions about productivity et cetera are.

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Well as I've already indicated, I agree with @cjcregg that it was asking far too much.

Also I think it was a mix and match of issues and that was unhelpful as well.

I now see where you post up the draft and as I say, I missed it because when I told you that a proposed letter was – perfect – I was referring to the one immediately above my post. I hadn't noticed your proposed FOIA request.

There will have to see what it returns and we may have to make a another one – although we then give them grounds for refusing on the basis that it is repetitive.

We'll see.

It's very important not to mix issues in these kinds of requests. Apart from anything else it can create confusion with the organisation that you are seeking information from. Also, these organisations do not like to provide information because they don't know what can of worms is being opened if that information is provided.

Let's see what happens.

If we have to do another one then maybe we can ask @cjcregg for some help in drafting it and some guidance on the matter.

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I think you should wait and see what the response to the one you've already sent.
You never know, they might produce some useful information and of course maybe we are wrong that the request will be declined.

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