Bankers As Heros Hero Hot Take

Hey, GonzoBankers. Tony DeSanctis back with another hot take. I just got back from a conference, and I wanted to share some things we’re hearing out in the marketplace.

Fraud continues to be a challenge, and it gets more and more difficult over time. Social engineering, sweetheart scams. I want to tell what I’m going to call a banker hero story here.

One of the folks I was talking to had a customer come in who wanted to wire $10,000 to somebody. The bank had a really good sense that it was fraudulent.

The customer was adamant that they absolutely were going to send this, and the bank stood their ground and basically protected the customer. So much so that the customer said, “I’m leaving, and I’m going to the bank across the street.”

They literally walked across the street to another bank and opened an account. To that bank’s credit, they did the same thing. The customer said they wanted to send the $10,000 and was adamant about it. That bank also protected the customer from themselves.

Come to find out, it was actually fraud, and both of those financial institutions saved that customer from sending $10,000 to a scam website.

I know it’s hard sometimes, and I know we worry about customer impact, but I think our role as bankers is important to remember. Sometimes we have to protect our customers from themselves.

When we think it’s fraud and when we think it’s unsafe, we have to stand our ground and make sure that we protect our customers.

That customer actually ended up coming back and banking with the first bank again because they realized that they were being scammed. So it doesn’t always turn out that you lose the customer. Sometimes you create even more loyalty by doing that.