The coalition government is promising a crackdown on financial con-artists, bringing together agencies, industry and consumer groups to shut down online scams.
As part of the new ‘Anti-Scam Alliance’, officials would work with police, major banks, telcos and digital platforms to increase data and intelligence sharing.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said more information would be shared in real-time, allowing a quicker response to threats.
“Up until this point, New Zealand’s anti-scam efforts have developed in an ad hoc way and suffered from a lack of coordination.
“We frequently hear that real-time information on scams is sourced from different areas across government and the private sector, making for a fragmented and often slow response.”
The new formalised structure would help “seal up the cracks that scammers are slipping through”, Simpson said.
As well, participants committed to rolling out public education campaigns and training programmes, and to set up or update sector guidelines.
Work on the plan would continue for the next six months before rollout early next year.
Simpson said he was also considering legislative changes – including amendments to the Fair Trading Act – to allow for more pro-active intelligence sharing and collaboration, without breaching privacy or competition laws.
“There is no silver bullet to address scams, but by working together across sectors to disrupt scams, we can significantly shift the dial.”
The alliance includes: Police, Netsafe, National Cyber Security Centre, Consumer NZ; banks ASB, ANZ, BNZ, Kiwibank and Westpac, as well as the New Zealand Banking Association and the Banking Ombudsman; telcos 2degrees, One, Spark, the NZ Telecommunications Forum; Google and Meta; government departments the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, Department of Internal Affairs, Inland Revenue Department, as well as the Financial Markets Authority and the Commerce Commission.
Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont said the announcement was a step in the right direction towards a co-ordinated multi-sector approach.
“Banks cannot fight scams alone,” he said. “Scams typically start when people are deceived by fake websites and search engine results, fake emails, texts, social media ads and chats, and phone calls, so there’s a role for telcos, social media companies and global tech platforms to help stop them in the first place.”
Banks had significantly stepped up their scam prevention efforts, he said, including through the rollout of a new confirmation-of-payee service.
The Code of Banking Practice would also be updated this year, with a commitment to provide pre-transaction warnings for certain payments, identify high-risk transactions, provide a 24/7 scam reporting channel and share information about accounts used by criminals with other banks, he said.
“Where banks fail to meet those commitments, they will compensate all or part of the loss for eligible customers.”
