The past decade has seen an increase in activity from organised criminals worldwide stealing money through scams.
Until recently, financial losses from scams reported by Australians had followed a growth trajectory that dated back to 2012. This trend came to a halt in 2023, when losses fell by 13 percent to $2.7 billion, according to the ACCC and its National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC).
While losses are still unacceptably high, this dip is a signal that anti-scam innovations deployed by the banks, along with other key players in the ecosystem, are helping to protect more Australians, says James Roberts, CommBank General Manager of Group Fraud.
Among CommBank’s customers, Roberts says scam losses more than halved during the last financial year, an encouraging drop that was helped by the bank’s suite of anti-scam initiatives – from policies to help halt payments to scam cryptocurrency accounts and customer education initiatives, to new technologies such as CommBank’s ‘CallerCheck’ in-app caller verification and ‘NameCheck’ security tool.
But he says more work is needed, and to truly rein in the threat, banks are just one part of the solution.