FINANCE LITIGATION UPDATE – JULY 2022 20 Philipp v Barclays: the careful calibration of the Quincecare duty The scope of the Quincecare duty has been under the spotlight recently. In Philipp v Barclays Bank UK Plc1, the Court of Appeal held that the doctrine applies whenever a bank is put "on inquiry" that complying with a customer's instruction (even from an individual account holder) might help facilitate fraud. Key questions for banks to consider now are: 1) in what circumstances is a bank put "on inquiry"; and 2) what steps should a bank take to verify whether complying with the instruction would facilitate a fraud or not? Background In Philipp v Barclays Bank plc2, Mrs Philipp (a music teacher) and her husband Dr Philipp (a retired public health physician) were defrauded by a number of individuals who persuaded them to part with a significant proportion of their personal savings via a sophisticated authorised push payment "APP" fraud. With the prospect of recovery from the fraudsters unlikely, Mrs Philipp sued the bank claiming it had breached its Quincecare duty by not refraining from executing her order to transfer the funds. At first instance, the High Court granted summary judgment in favour of Barclays because it held that the duty was limited to situations where payment instructions are not properly authorised, i.e. they are made by a customer’s agent in an attempt to misappropriate funds. However, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision and held that the Quincecare duty as developed by authority was not limited to circumstances where the bank was instructed by the 1 [2022] EWCA Civ 318 customer's agent. The duty arises in any case where a bank is put on inquiry. When is a bank on inquiry? The extent to which Barclays Bank in this case had been put on inquiry will be a matter for the trial judge. However, the contrast between the analysis of the High Court and that of the Court of Appeal highlights the complexity of the question. At first instance, the court rejected the suggestion that the size of the sum transferred and / or the fact it was an international payment to a first-time payee were potential grounds for suspicion. It held this would involve attributing the bank with "a degree of foresight" of risk which Mrs Philipp herself did not accept at the time. Banks could not be expected to carry out "urgent detective work" or to act as guardians of the commercial wisdom of their customers' decisions. Such an obligation would be "unduly burdensome". The Court of Appeal, however, disagreed with this analysis. It considered that factors which might lead to a bank being on inquiry included the size of the sum being transferred and the fact that the payee was a petroleum company in the UAE. It also suggested that Mrs Philipp's account history was relevant and the fact that she was attending a branch which was not her own and seeking to move money which had only been recently transferred into her account. The Court of Appeal was also not troubled by the contention that applying the Quincecare duty in relation to individual account holders would be unduly burdensome. It placed reliance on the expert evidence that in 2018 (the relevant time of the transactions), a voluntary code of practice was already in existence and that banks would be able to differentiate between, for example, the circumstances of this case and the many millions of low value BACS transfers where they would not be put on inquiry. The argument that if the duty applied in Mrs Philipp's case then it would apply across the board, was dismissed as irrelevant. What steps should banks take when on inquiry? On appeal, the court held that the duty of care and the standard of care in these kinds of cases were so intertwined that it was not easy to examine one without the other, and that analysis could only 2 [2021] EWHC 10 (Comm)
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