Investing
INVESTING Individual Investor Financial Adviser Institutional Investor FUNDING Entrepreneur Real Estate

Protect yourself from fraud

Learn how you can identify and report some common types.

Concerned about a communication from Octopus?

If you are concerned about a call, letter or email, please call our customer service team.

There are many types of fraud and it can be difficult to know how to spot them if you’ve never heard of them before. Fraud can happen at any time and can happen in numerous ways, take a look through our examples to understand some of the most common schemes:

Most investment frauds usually involve criminals contacting people out of the blue and convincing them to invest in schemes or products that are worthless or do not exist. Once the criminals have received payment, they cease contact with the victim. This type of fraud is commonly known as a boiler room scam.

All financial firms in the UK are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and are obliged to act in a certain way. Knowing these facts, Jessie could have spotted this scam before sending any money.

Misrepresenting an opportunity to a customer

When the caller guaranteed Jessie a return, they misrepresented an investment opportunity. An investment is never risk free.

Proper market conduct standards

The investment offer was using insider knowledge for personal gains. This is something a regulated firm should never do.

High pressure tactics

The caller put pressure on Jessie to make a decision urgently. Regulated firms must pay due regard to a customer’s interests and treat them fairly.

“Over £63m was lost nationally by victims of investment fraud who referred to a social media platform in their report to Action Fraud.”¹

Verify account owners before making payments

We take steps to verify the ownership of any account to which we are asked to make payment. This may mean we ask for further information or evidence before making payment.

We appreciate this may be inconvenient, but believe it is important in order to protect our customers from fraud. We do not make payments to third parties.

We never sell data to third parties without consent

We do not sell or share your personal information or data to any other organisation or individual.

Any broad statistics and customer profiling information with third parties will be anonymised, so you will not be identifiable from that data.

Keeping yourself safe

If you have suspicions, hang up & call us

If you are concerned about a call, letter or email you or one of your clients receive, which you believe to be suspicious, please call our customer service team.