CommBank in Australia has halved the amount its customers lost to scams as a result of anti-scam initiatives, such as ‘NameCheck’ technology and the country’s ‘intelligence loop’.
CommBank reported that in the year to June 2024, customer scam losses were reduced by half compared to the previous financial year.
Its ‘NameCheck’ technology prevented scam payments worth more than an estimated $40 million and also stopped in excess of $370 million in mistaken payments.
It works by searching the account details entered by a CommBank customer when making a first-time payment to that account in NetBank, the CommBank app, or CommBiz and will indicate whether the account details look right.
The bank’s NameCheck technology has been made available to Bendigo Bank, Liink by JP Morgan and fraud monitoring company Satori, and is now used around four million times per month.
James Roberts, CommBank’s general manager of group fraud, said: “Over the last financial year CommBank has continued to add market-leading anti-scam technologies to protect Australians, while collaborating across industry – including with other banks and telcos Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.”
“Whilst this is encouraging, we acknowledge that Australians continue to lose money to scams and banks will continue to do more, and importantly telecommunications and social media platforms need to step up, to further suppress consumer losses,” Roberts added.
In June this year, CommBank became the first bank in Australia to integrate and share information into the country’s new anti-scam intelligence loop.
Co-designed by the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange and National Anti-Scam Centre, the loop enables the organisations that join it, including banks, telecoms networks, internet service providers and social media companies, to share information on scams and fraudulent activity with other participants.
CommBank recently submitted more than 1,500 entries containing scam phone numbers and URLs for blocking and takedown.
“Information shared through the intel loop can be used to protect customers. It is critical we have as many participants sharing actionable intelligence, as soon as possible,” Roberts said.
“Most scams originate outside of the regulated banking system – phone calls with scammers, fake investment ads on social, and SMSs and emails with dodgy links are all ways scammers make contact. This requires a whole-of-ecosystem response from big tech, telcos and banks, focused on the source of scams.”
‘CallerCheck’ technology also reduced the amount lost to bank impersonation scams, by enabling customers to verify it is CommBank calling them, as did ‘CustomerCheck’, which allows CommBank to verify customers in-branch.
These technologies were deployed 3.8 million and 3.7 million times respectively, throughout the year to June 2024.
Further reading: CBA adopts Open Banking for mortgage brokers via NextGen’s platform
