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Last financial year, 31,700 major bank customers fell victim to scams, with losses exceeding $550 million.
As such, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has called on financial institutions to improve their approach to handling scams.
The new ASIC scam prevention, detection and response report focussed on the four major banks in Australia — NAB, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, and ANZ — and examined the approach they took to prevent, detect, and respond to scams.
ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said combatting scams was a “critical task” for corporate Australia, and banks needed to work cohesively to stop scams at their source.
“Australia’s big four banks have invested significantly in their anti-scam efforts over the last several years and have implemented a number of innovative and positive initiatives, including some recently implemented following the conclusion of ASIC’s review,” Ms Court said.
“However, the increasing prominence of scams means that there is still more to be done.”
The report follows an announcement from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that hackers and scammers stole more than $3 billion from Aussies in 2022.
ASIC’s report observed that bank customers overwhelmingly bore the losses from these scams, accounting for 96 per cent of total scams across the banks, with reimbursement rates as low as 2 to 5 per cent.
Collectively, the banks detected and stopped only around 13 per cent of scam payments made by their customers.
“We’d like to see the banks take steps to evolve their scam management practices, including how they inform and educate customers and help them through what is a distressing time,” Ms Court said.
In response to the report, NAB Executive of Group Investigations and Fraud Chris Sheehan said the bank had engaged with ASIC.
“We can and will do more to combat scams, and we’ll now review and consider opportunities identified in the report,” Mr Sheehan said.
“The prevalence of scams highlights a growing global issue and underlines the need for greater collaboration across government, business sectors and the community to stop the crime.”
Australians of every age, gender and demographic are flooded with scam lures via text messages, phone calls, emails and on social media and gaming platforms, and it’s only getting worse.
NAB reported a 38 per cent increase in customers reporting scams last financial year, and the bank expects this number to rise again this year.
ASIC has urged the space needed consistent outcomes for every customer experience of a scam, and banks needed to do more to ensure their responses did not cause further distress to customers, which was sometimes the case
ASIC said banks needed to reconsider the way they respond to and engaged with scam victims.
Australian Banking Association CEO Anna Bligh said the organisation has reviewed the ASIC report and banks would consider its contents, but that stopping scams needed to be a team effort from governments, regulators and businesses.
“Banks remain committed to the collaborative initiatives commenced as part of the Assistant Treasurer’s Scams Roundtable in February,” Ms Bligh said.
“We also note that ASIC has acknowledged the significant investment by the major banks in anti-scam efforts including a ‘number of innovative and positive initiatives’ completed after ASIC’s review.
“This is a point-in-time report; banks have already identified the need for more consistency and have been developing an industry-wide standard over the past six months.”
Commonwealth Bank declined to comment on the proposed review by ASIC.
