STANDARD BANK: INSECURE AND IMPERSONAL

Good day I am a pensioner and have been a client of Standard Bank since 1969! Sadly with the introduction of the many 'Self Help' and 'Call Centre' facilities that have been implemented over the past few years, banking with Standard Bank has become exceedingly impersonal and a 'don't care' attitude prevails when dealing with customer issues.

After my card was (most embarrassingly) rejected several times by local merchants on and after 29 July 2024 with the reason "insufficient funds", I discovered on 1 August 2024 that major *****ulent, 'international', transactions had been executed on my Standard Bank credit card account. I immediately contacted the ***** Division and the card was stopped. They committed to send me a new card within a few days, which will now only arrive tomorrow, 9 days later.

My account is still overdrawn. Excluding any international transaction fees, payment rejection fees, interest, etc, the *****ulent transactions alone are at least R110 000! My creditors are sending me notices of their failure to be able to get payments due by me to them.

Having contacted the Bank on several occasions to credit my account with the money I clearly did not spend, I was simply fobbed off by statements like: 'you must allow us 7 working days to investigate and 'we will get back to you!'; and 'there's nothing we can do to help at this point'. To add insult to injury I noted today that I am being charged interest on my outstanding balance and this will continue until they eventually resolve the issue.

There are very obvious security failures on Standard Bank's part which include: -Failure to send or even generate OTP's for any of the *****ulent international transactions, or SMS's notifying of transactions made (also confirmed by the Standard Bank ***** Division representative). - Failure to detect multiple, in short succession, international anomalous transactions as suspicious (standard practice in other banks). - Failure to enforce the card limit of R100 000, allowing the card to be over drawn to R132 000. (Who knows how many more *****ulent transactions would have occurred if I had not picked up the problem!!)

It must also be noted, that I did not provide anyone with my credit card details, nor provide any OTP's, nor clicked on any suspicious links. As mentioned, the reality was that no notifications were generated or sent to me by Standard Bank for the *****ulent transactions. (I am quite accustomed to being notified when any suspicious activities are identified).The number of security failures really does strongly suggest possible insider involvement and /or lack of controls which should be standard for any financial institution's IT systems.

Further research on my part indicates that this is not the first and only case where Standard Bank has failed to safeguard its customers accounts. In one case, the de*****ed pensioner had to wait months for resolution!

This is creating huge undue stress and the Bank's ***** division had simply told me that I initially need to wait 7 working days for them to respond. This is no way for a bank to handle a customer who is a victim of Standard Bank's flawed security controls.

The detective who is investigating the case I lodged with SAPS advised me that it is actually the Bank that should be opening a case and not me as it it is patently obvious it is the Bank who had been de*****ed!

Today being the eighth working day since I reported the *****, and having received no feedback at all from the Bank regarding progress with their investigation, I contacted the ***** Division. The agent advised me the investigation is still ongoing and that he would solicit an update on the status. He was kind enough to let me know that this could take an additional 5 working days for me to get a call from the Bank! After I advised him I would be making my frustrations and disappointment known to the public, he put me in contact with the 'Complaints Department'. This agent also committed to escalating the matter, but also advised me regarding the additional 5-day wait!

In my opinion Standard Bank's reputation of being one of the top banks in terms of security and Customer Care is fading fast.

My obvious concluding question is: Is this the kind of bank one should entrust with one's money? Obviously, one is at risk by just having a bank account. Observing all the pitfalls one is warned about is clearly not sufficient to ensure the safety of a customer's funds.

Furthermore, there appears to be no-one that I can speak to to determine how to proceed in the interim or obtain any advice from at ***** Division.

I am left with a feeling of utter helplessness - does justice still prevail?