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Unsurprising yet disheartening news about banks this week from the Financial Ombudsman Service, which has warned customers not to expect to keep any money accidentally credited to their accounts.

The free ombudsman service was set up by law to settle complaints between consumers and financial businesses on anything from pawnbroking to mortgages. Mis-applied credit is counted under complaints about current accounts made to the ombudsman.

About 100 cases of mis-applied credit are dealt with by the Ombudsman each year but only in a few rulings have the bank customers been allowed to keep the cash.

Some people complain that after a bank has mistakenly added money into their account, the bank then chases them for the return of the cash. Although the customer might argue that the error was the fault of the bank and so the customer should keep the money, the ombudsman usually favours the bank.

Writing in the thrilling must-read Ombudsman News, a senior official said ‘in the board game Monopoly it is good news if you get a card telling you that the bank has made an error in your favour as you do get to keep the money. But in real life, things are different. When dealing with complaints about mis-applied credit, we generally take the view that consumers are required to return any money paid to them by mistake.’

An example was when one customer had £1,000 transferred into his account. The bank accidentally duplicated the transfer, putting another £1,000 in the account. The bank asked for the extra £1,000 to be repaid two weeks later, but the customer refused, saying that it was the bank’s mistake and that he had already spent the money. The ombudsman ruled that he should pay the money back to the bank, which was acting reasonably when asking for the money in 10 interest-free instalments.

However, in a separate case, the ombudsman decided that a different customer could keep the extra cash. Her account had been credited with £1,000 after she paid in a cheque of just £100. After spotting the error when checking a balance on a cash machine, the customer spoke to a cashier inside a branch, who claimed it was in fact correct. The customer was expecting a tax rebate and assumed the money was from this. She took her niece on a holiday to Italy with the money. Nearly four months later, she was understandably distressed to receive a demand for £900 from the bank. The ombudsman ruled that she had acted in good faith, had checked with the cashier and could not recover any of the money spent on the holiday. As a result, the ombudsman ruled that the bank was not entitled to demand the £900 back.

Although these examples may seem to highlight an inconsistent approach by the Ombudsman the key tenets of good faith and reason hold true in both. Although it would be nice to keep money mis-applied by banks, most customers have no real reason to expect to do so.

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The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has announced this week that the number of fraudulent insurance claims made in the UK rose to a record high in 2009. There were 122,000 detected fraudulent claims, valued at £840m. This represents a 14% rise on the previous year.

However, the ABI said it was unable to tell whether the rising number was the result of more bogus claims being made or better detection by insurers.

Approximately 4% of all claims were bogus in 2009, a similar proportion to the previous year, suggesting there were more claims in total.

The figures showed that £410m of motor insurance fraud was detected, the highest figure by value. The most common bogus or exaggerated cases involved home insurance.

Some notable frauds in personal liability claims included a claim for head injuries sustained by falling over, when they were actually caused by being hit on the head with a baseball bat during a fight.

Honest customers rightly object to having to pay higher premiums to subsidise the fraudulent minority, which is why we should hope insurers continue to up their game in the war on the cheats.

Separate figures from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau show that the highest number of uninsured drivers are on the road in London, followed by Merseyside and Greater Manchester.