Govt to ramp up anti-scam efforts, bringing public sector and banking industry together

The government plans to bring together public sector agencies and banking industry players in an effort to ramp up New Zealand's anti-scam efforts.

To mark the start of Fraud Awareness Week, it has been revealed New Zealanders have lost nearly $200m in the last year to scammers.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly said the number was likely higher, as only around one in five scams are reported.

"People who think they've been scammed, they feel ashamed. Actually, they shouldn't. We need more people to own up and front up and say they have, because when that happens, agencies can take action and deal with it," he said.

"When people don't talk about it, that's when other people get ripped off, if I can use that word, so it's just being open about it and educating people."

New Zealand does not have a centralised, instantaneous method for reporting scams, which hampered efforts to respond quickly. Bayly said detection, prevention, and response had largely fallen between the cracks of industry and government.

"We don't have good enough coordination, both across government, and certainly within the portals of industry, and I'm referring to telecommunication, banking and social media providers."

Bayly has been appointed lead minister to coordinate activity, and bring together industry and government partners. He said it would have three steps:

• Coordinate work across ministerial portfolios and public sector agencies to improve information sharing.
• Collaborate with industry to develop industry-led solutions within specific sectors (for example banks) and between different sectors (such as information sharing between telecommunications and banks).
• Engage with ministerial counterparts in Australia and Singapore to establish a coordinated regional approach.

Bayly said in New Zealand, people were most likely to be scammed through social media. But Australians were being hit hard by SMS or texting scams, while Singapore was dealing with mass email URL scams.

Banks in New Zealand were set to roll out confirmation of payee by the end of November, which Bayly said was a good start.

"But also, I think it's incumbent on the government to act and coordinate activity," he said.

"The biggest thing I've found, talking to the telcos and going into their knock rooms or security rooms, or across the bank, is actually making sure we have a more seamless and immediate transfer of data across industry groups, so that people are much more aware of when things are happening and react much more quickly."

Earlier this year, the banking sector asked the government to support an anti-scam centre, which targets mule accounts.

Labour had also campaigned on an anti-scamming unit, which would have brought together government and industry within the Financial Markets Authority.

"One of the biggest things is that most scams are hosted on social media platforms providers," Bayly told Morning Report

"I've spoken to Google and Meta about that and met them in Singapore and spoken to them in America as well.

"The biggest issue we want, is them to take localised action rather than global action, because if we are aware of things happening in New Zealand, we need to be able to take down a URL, even if it's located off shore."

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