Norway FSA Relays UK FCA Warning on PSP-Claimback Clone of Authorized Firm

Key Takeaways

• The Norway Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanstilsynet) has republished a warning originating from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) about "PSP-Claimback," a clone of an FCA-authorized firm.
• Compliance teams should treat this as a fraud and impersonation alert, and take steps to prevent customers and the institution from being exposed to the scam.

Deep Dive

The source content is limited. It identifies the warning's name (PSP-Claimback, flagged as a "clone"), the issuer's jurisdiction (United Kingdom), and a link to the FCA's warning page. In FCA terminology, a "clone firm" is a fraudulent entity that falsely uses the name, address, or Firm Reference Number of a genuine authorized firm to appear legitimate. The name suggests a possible link to "claim back" or recovery-type schemes, often targeting victims of previous payment fraud. That inference should be verified against the full FCA notice, as the details were not provided here.

The warning introduces no new legal or regulatory requirements and carries no stated deadlines or compliance dates. Its value is as threat intelligence. Because a Norwegian authority has republished it, the entity may be targeting or have reached individuals or businesses in Norway, or the authority considers the risk to be cross-border. Compliance teams should not assume exposure is limited to the UK.

Recommended actions: (1) Review the full FCA notice and extract identifiers such as names, domains, phone numbers, email addresses, and any impersonated firm details. (2) Add these indicators to fraud, sanctions, and adverse-media screening lists and to transaction monitoring rules, where appropriate. (3) Check whether customers, counterparties, or payees have any connection to the entity, including payments to related accounts. (4) Alert customer-facing and fraud-operations staff, and consider a customer advisory on recovery-fraud scams. (5) Where suspicious activity is identified, file suspicious activity or transaction reports with the relevant financial intelligence unit (Økokrim in Norway, the NCA in the UK) and consider reporting to the FCA and Finanstilsynet.

Risk implications: Exposure includes customer fraud losses, authorized push payment (APP) scam reimbursement obligations, reputational damage, and potential AML issues if accounts are used to receive or move proceeds. Where the cloned firm is a genuine authorized firm, third-party due diligence should confirm that contact details and payment instructions match the legitimate firm's verified records. Overall impact is low to moderate and mostly operational, but it rises if there is direct customer or transactional exposure.

Source: Norway Financial Supervisory Authority