Stay secure and avoid scams

 

It’s International Fraud Awareness Week and here at Hyalite Mortgages we take the financial security of our customers very seriously. We’re committed to protecting your data and account from fraudulent activity.

We work hard to protect our systems and maintain high levels of security for telephone calls. We also routinely monitor account transactions to look for suspicious or fraudulent payments. Our colleagues are trained to spot anything suspicious in their day-to-day roles, to protect you and your account from fraud and other criminal activity.

On this page, we’ve outlined various ways you can help yourself stay secure with details of how to spot and avoid financial scams.

Please call us immediately if you have any concerns about the security of your account. We’ll always try to help where we can.

What's on this page

How we’ll contact you

We typically contact customers by phone, text message, interactive text/voice message, or letter. We also occasionally send emails to landlords with two or more buy-to-let mortgages with us.

If you’ve registered for Self-Serve and use it to send us a secure message, we’ll respond by secure message. You’ll need to be signed in to Self-Serve to send secure messages, or to read any replies we send to you.

If you’re concerned about a recent communication about your account and whether it genuinely came from us, we’ve provided some information below that may be useful.

If we call you, we’ll always introduce ourselves and start the call by confirming your identity. To do this, we’ll ask you some security questions based on your personal account details. We do this because it’s important to verify that we’re speaking to the correct person before discussing confidential information during the call.

If you’re ever unsure that you’re speaking with us, you can hang up and phone us back to confirm the call is genuine.

When we need to quickly tell you something important about your account, we sometimes use interactive text and voice messages, which allow you to send a response directly to us. This means that you won’t always need to call us and wait to speak to an agent, and you can also reply at a time that suits you.

When we send you an interactive message, we’ll ask you to verify your identity by responding with your date of birth. After that, we’ll send you further messages to explain why we’re getting in touch. We’ll prompt you to reply to any options we present by pressing numbers on your phone keypad.

The only personal details we’ll ever ask you for in an interactive message are your date of birth. We’ll never ask you for any other personal information.

We’ll never ask you for debit card details or any other financial information in an interactive message.

If you’re worried that a message you’ve received isn’t from us, please call us and we’ll confirm if it’s genuine.

We send letters to provide information about your account, advise you of updates and changes, or confirm decisions made or any actions required following a phone call with us. In some letters, we may request that you get in touch with us.

We may send letters to each correspondence address we have for your account, so it’s important you tell us if you need to change your correspondence address or other contact details.

If you’re worried that a letter you’ve received isn’t from us, please call us and we’ll confirm if it’s genuine.

Because of security concerns, we don’t routinely use email to communicate with customers. However, if you’re a landlord with two or more buy-to-let mortgages with us, our specialist team may occasionally send emails directly to you or reply to emails that you’ve sent to them.

As online scams become more complex, it’s always worth being suspicious of any unsolicited emails you receive. There’s more info about this below.

If you’re ever worried that a message you’ve received isn’t from us, please call us and we’ll confirm if it’s genuine.

If you send us a secure message in Self-Serve, we’ll respond to your query with a secure message.

After you sign in to Self-Serve, if we’ve sent you a secure message, you’ll see a small red circle over the mail icon above the Contact us button at the top of the screen.

Find out more about using Self-Serve here.

If you’re ever worried that a secure message you’ve received isn’t from us, please call us and we’ll confirm if it’s genuine.

Extra support and assistance

We aim to provide a service that is accessible and inclusive for all our customers. To help do this, we’ve introduced ways to make our correspondence, our service and our website suitable for everyone.

Please see our accessibility page for more information.

Using Self-Serve – our online system

 

Self-Serve is our secure online service that gives you more control over your mortgage and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With Self-Serve, you can send us a secure message, find key information about your account and carry out many tasks online, without having to call or write to us.

By registering with Self-Serve, you’ll be able to make use of this secure online service. Learn more here.

After you’ve created your Self-Serve account, you must keep the details safe. You’ll need your username and password each time you sign in to Self-Serve.  You must treat your username and password as confidential and not disclose them to anyone else. To provide an extra layer of security, after you’ve entered your password, we’ll send a one-time passcode (OTP) to your mobile phone. You’ll need to enter the passcode before you can access your account. If we don’t have your mobile phone number, you’ll need to call us to obtain the OTP.  Never give the OTP to anyone else.

Please call us as soon as possible if you believe any of your security details have been disclosed to someone else, or if someone has tried or might try to access your account.

To further protect your account, after you’ve signed in to Self-Serve, you’ll automatically be logged off if there is no activity on the system for ten minutes.

Beware of financial scams

Security is a very important topic in a world where customers interact more regularly with companies online. Financial scams are sadly more commonplace, with criminals increasingly looking to exploit security vulnerabilities and trick consumers to achieve their fraudulent aims.

You can take action to help ensure that you don’t become a victim and stay protected online.

Take Five to Stop Fraud

UK Finance, the leading industry body for financial services in the UK, launched the Take Five to Stop Fraud service.

Take Five is a national campaign that offers straightforward and impartial advice to help everyone protect themselves from preventable financial fraud. This includes email deception and phone-based scams as well as online fraud, particularly where criminals impersonate trusted organisations.

Visit the Take Five website

If you notice anything suspicious about a message appearing to be from us, please don’t respond to this and call us to report it. We’ll then confirm if this is genuine.

Consider questions such as:

  • Were you expecting the message?
  • Is the language urgent, alarming, or threatening?
  • Is the sender requesting financial or login information?
  • Is there anything unusual or out of the ordinary about the message?
  • Is the greeting very generic?
  • Is it poorly crafted with poor spelling and bad grammar?
  • Is it sent from the company’s main email address?
  • Does it contain an offer that’s too good to be true – like a prize win or other financial incentives?

Fraudsters will often go to great lengths to impersonate people, the police and organisations (such as banks or mortgage lenders) using calls, emails, texts and social media posts to manipulate you. These sorts of messages are known as phishing.

They can be designed to trick you into divulging confidential security information that a criminal can then exploit or may attempt to con you into making a fraudulent payment.

Hoax emails (often called spam) are also plentiful, and the majority are no more than an annoyance. Most are designed to be viral and request you send the email or message on to friends and family. Doing so can seem harmless, especially if there is comical content.

However, some hoax viral emails are used by spammers to harvest email addresses for future spam attacks. If you receive such an email or message, it’s best not to send it on and simply delete it.

If you’ve been sent any sort of message or communication that you’re unsure of, take a moment to look for any red flags that may indicate the message is potentially fake.

Protecting your devices

There are various ways to protect your computer and other devices, which can help prevent viruses or other forms of malware from being installed.

  • Install the latest operating system updates on your computer or mobile phone.
  • Install updates to your computer operating system and turn on automatic update for your browser.
  • Install the latest anti-virus software on your computer. By doing this you’ll be securing the software from viruses and fixing known software bugs.
  • Be suspicious of any software you’re asked to download, especially if you’re not sure of its origins.
  • Be aware of unexpected attachments on emails, or emails from individuals you do not recognise asking you to open an attachment.

Supporting victims of fraud

If you’re the victim of any form of financial crime, please tell us as soon as possible. There are various things we may be able to help with, from limiting any further impact or supporting you if you’re in financial difficulty.

If you require further support and advice, there are various charities and other independent organisations who can help. The UK government, through the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), maintain a list of organisations that can support victims of crime. Please visit the SFO website or download their summary guide.

We hope this information is useful for you.

Please note, this page contains links to external websites. We are not responsible for the content of external websites.

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