Up to $2 billion a year lost to scams ‒ banks call for a national anti-scam unit

Tuesday, 14 November 2023

Nearly $200 million was lost to scams over the past year, according to 11 of New Zealand’s largest financial institutions. The figure has been released as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment launches Fraud Awareness Week.

ANZ chief executive Antonia Watson says everyone agrees a national anti-scam centre is needed to stem the tide of scam losses as new figures suggest annual losses for households and business-owners are anywhere from $200 million to $2 billion a year.

“There’s nothing I’ve seen more alignment on in terms of every player I have talked to,” Watson said.

She was speaking after the Global Anti Scam Alliance released figures derived from a survey indicating New Zealanders were losing an estimated $2.05b a year to scammers.

On Monday the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said just under $200m was lost to scams over the pase year, according to 11 of New Zealand’s largest financial institutions.

Brent Carey, chief executive officer of the online safety non-profit organisation Netsafe, said the two numbers indicated the range of scam losses, but said it was clear scam losses had risen to become a significant portion of GDP.

“If it’s at the $2b, it’s half a percentage point off our GDP. We’d rather put that money into schools and hospitals, and other services,” Carey said.

Sam Leggett, senior analyst, Threat & Incident Response at CERT NZ photographed at the Exposed exhibition showcasing real people who’ve been caught out by online scams.

“It’s a scam-demoneum,” he said.

Stung by rising bad news coverage, banks have thrown their weight behind establishing a national anti-scam centre based on the successful Singaporean model.

Watson participated in a conference call on Monday with the chief executives of banks, telecommunications companies and social media on working together to reduce the impact of scams.

But Carey was not impressed with the talk.

“We could have it up and running by Christmas, if they partnered with Netsafe,” he said.

Netsafe was already logging 15,000 scam reports a year, but the banks said they needed a scam centre which could provide a conduit for information-sharing on scam activity.

Carey said he was amazed it had taken the banks so long to recognise the need for a national scam centre.

“Netsafe has been at the forefront of fighting scams for 20 years. The fact they have just woken up to that – where have they been?”

Later this week, Netsafe planned to launch an AI-powered tool for people to check whether email or text messages were likely to be scams. It would be called Chat Netsafe, and use Chatgpt.

Bank of New Zealand, Westpac and ANZ all used profit announcements in the past week to highlight their efforts to increase fraud detection.

Kiwis had been hit by a wave of fraud and deception crime, the latest Crime and Victimisation Survey shows.

The survey was compiled for the Ministry of Justice through public surveys to estimate annual crime levels, with the latest report based on data collected between November 2021 and November 2022.

It found the annual number of fraud and deception crimes had risen to 510,000 from 288,000 the previous year, with more than 90% of those crimes not reported to police.