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Summary
- Leading bank customers have been warned about a phoney text message scam asking for personal details.
- The Chartered Trading Standards Institute has got evidence of fraud for customers of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Halifax.
Account holders with the top leading banks have been cautioned about online scams that have been bothering the customers as online payments shot up during the pandemic. According to reports, miscreants are sending false text messages to the account holder claiming to be from the bank asking for their login details. These messages were sent out as a security text messages requesting customers to verify suspicious transactions.
UK-based Chartered Trading Standard Institute (CTSI) said that they had evidence that fraudsters were targeting customers of banks such as Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and Halifax.
We will take a look at the performance of some of the prominent banking stocks listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LON: LLOY)
As per a report released by Lloyds last month, almost one-fourth of investment scam victims in 2020 were aged over 55, who lost around £26,000 on an average in one year.
According to the bank’s latest financial results, its CET1 ratio was 16.2 per cent with a statutory profit worth £1.4 billion for FY2020.
The company share price was up 1.01 per cent to GBX 42.49 on Tuesday at 1.14 PM.
Barclays PLC (LON: BARC)
Barclays recently reported said that online scams targeting businesses surged by 31 per cent in January and February, as compared to the same period previous year. The bank said that impersonation scams were the most frequently used trick to target businesses. The bank said that it was issuing scam warnings to all its business customers, including those in the construction and property sector, who were found to be highly susceptible to these crimes according to last year’s data.
For FY2020, the bank reported an income of £21.8 billion and profit-before-tax worth £3.1 billion. The CET1 ratio stood at 15.1 per cent for the year.
The bank’s stock was up 3.06 per cent to GBX 185.90 on Tuesday at 1.02 PM.
HSBC Holdings PLC (LON: HSBA)
Two weeks ago, HSBC reported that it had issued an urgent scam warning to its customers. It said that a whopping sum of nearly £18 million was swindled away in 2020 from its customers by cheaters who posed as authorised providers.
According to the bank’s latest financial results for Q1 2020, the reported profit before tax was US$3.2 billion for the quarter, down 48 per cent from the previous quarter. The bank’s reported revenue was US$13.7 billion, down 5 per cent from Q4 2019. The leading bank’s balance sheet remained resilient with a CET1 ratio of 14.6 per cent for the first quarter of 2020.
The company shares were trading at GBX 425.85 at 12.35 PM on 30 March, up 1.85 per cent from its previous close. It displayed a YTD return of 12.53 per cent and a market cap of £85.16 at the time of reporting.
