The Banking Association is criticising social media, technology and telecommunications companies for not doing enough to prevent scams.
Payments NZ reported about $265 million had been scammed out of New Zealand bank accounts in the past year.
The Code of Banking Practice was updated on Sunday, with new protection measures introduced, including:
- pre-transaction warnings
- a “confirmation” of payee service
- identification of and response to high-risk transactions or unusual account transaction activity, and the ability to delay or block transactions in some cases
- providing a 24/7 reporting channel for customers who think they’ve been scammed
- sharing scammer account information with other banks to help prevent criminal activity, and freezing funds where appropriate.
Banks would be forced to compensate all or part of the loss for customers if these are not followed, and would also continue to compensate losses for customers whose banking was accessed without authorisation.
Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont told RNZ it was adopting a “prevention-led approach”, but he stressed the need for “shared responsibilities for protecting New Zealanders from scams”.
“Banks have stepped up their customer protections and will be accountable for those measures, but they cannot take on full liability for scam losses that are beyond their control and may start with a fake ad or chat on social media, or a fake search engine result,” he said.
While the Code of Banking Practice was updated every five years, Beaumont said the new protection measures would be reviewed on a regular basis.
“The thing about scams is that they’re constantly evolving,” he said.
“These are fairly high-level prevention measures that are in place, but scammers are tricky and devious and are always trying to get around the rules, and so it’s a matter of constantly reviewing and constantly evolving the vigilance that banks have to keep customers safe.”
By Jeffrey Haley and Pretoria Gordon of rnz.co.nz
