Banks call for increased scam awareness

Major banks have highlighted the importance of sharing personal experiences with scams to help widen community education on spotting potential cyber-criminal activity.

With Scam Awareness Week underway, ANZ Banking Group has urged its customers to share personal experiences with scams to help spread awareness and better recognise the red flags.

ANZ head of customer protection Shaq Johnson said, “Scams are a widespread issue and a scourge on the community.

“At ANZ, and across the banking sector, we continue to invest in prevention and protection measures to help keep our customers safe from cybercrime,” Johnson said.  

The major bank recorded that between October 2023 to June 2024, total ANZ customer scam losses dropped by around 49 percent while the number of scam events reduced by roughly a third compared with the same period in 2023.

ANZ data said it stopped over $100 million being lost to cybercriminals. Online platforms are the most common source of scams, accounting for almost 45 percent of customer reports, followed by telephone or SMS and email.

“The measures we’ve implemented are having an impact – but while it’s an encouraging sign, there is more to do, including continued focus on education to inform people about how criminal syndicates are targeting their victims, changing methodology, and what to look out for,” Johnson said.

Already, ANZ has invested in various methods to combat scams including introducing a new ‘scam scoring’ model, which uses AI to complement the existing security systems and boost scam detection. 

It’s also introduced ‘Crypto Protect’, a tool that turns off the ability for ANZ Plus customers to make payments to cryptocurrency exchanges and scam specialists to assist customers.

Westpac also announced extending its payee verification solution to institutional and government clients.

Westpac Verify, which checks for "mismatched" account details on transactions run via the New Payments Platform (NPP), will soon be introduced on the PaymentsPlus platform.

Westpac chief executive for institutional bank, Nell Hutton said, “Westpac Verify for PaymentsPlus will help our clients ensure they’re paying the right recipients, reducing the risk of errors and scam payments.”

The new feature is expected to be available in late September 2024 with batch verifications, and API connectivity via PaymentsPlus, is scheduled to be added in the next quarter.

Some of Westpac’s other anti-scam protections include cryptocurrency and merchant blocks, Safepay, Dynamic CVC, in-app calling and Westpac Safecall which provides customers with calls via the app that are Westpac branded, verified by Optus and show a reason for the call.

NAB also has a variety of scam detections in place including biometric technology, in-app calling and has stopped using links within text messages plus crypto blocks.

The major bank also said the bank was investing in people and technology and continued education to reduce the impact of scams and stop crime.

NAB executive of group investigations Chris Sheehan said, “We’re starting to see some positive signs from this work with customer losses down 17 percent between October 2023 and March 2024, compared to the previous six months.

“That’s despite customer reports increasing by about 10 percent in the same period,” Sheehan said.

The Commonwealth Bank and Telstra have also piloted a new service last year that promises to recognise consumers being scammed out of large amounts of money in real-time.