Singapore banks, telcos may need to pay scam victims

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (Imda) published a joint paper proposing a Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) for phishing scams.

The SRF assigns financial institutions (FIs) and telecommunication companies (telcos) relevant duties to mitigate phishing scams and requires payouts to affected scam victims where these duties are breached.

“The SRF assigns shared responsibility by specifying upstream anti-scam duties FIs and telcos have to adhere to.

“Breaches of the duties will result in payouts to affected scam victims,” MAS deputy managing director (financial supervision) Ho Hern Shin said in a statement yesterday.

She said this incentivises vigilance by all parties in the ecosystem to uphold safety in e-payments.

The SRF includes FIs, which play a critical role as gatekeepers against the outflow of monies due to scams, as well as telcos, which play a supporting role as infrastructure providers for SMS which is used by FIs as an official communication channel.

Among scams prevalent today, digitally enabled scams that result in unauthorised transactions are of particular concern.

The consideration of which party will bear responsibility for the losses is based on a “waterfall approach”.

FIs, followed by telcos, are expected to bear the full loss if they fail to discharge their respective prescribed duties.

Multi-layered approach

Imda deputy chief executive (connectivity, development, and regulation) Aileen Chia said it worked closely with telcos to implement a multi-layered approach to prevent scams from being conducted over calls and SMS.

“Measures such as the mandatory SMS Sender ID Registry introduced in January 2023 have significantly reduced the number of scam SMS cases by 70 percent in the three months since the registry’s launch.

“The inclusion of telcos in the SRF as supporting infrastructure providers serves to strengthen the ecosystem against scams,” said Chia.

MAS and Imda invite interested parties to submit their comments on the proposals by Dec 20.

- Bernama

2.6 billion scam calls blocked by MCMC

Fahmi: Govt mulling national anti-scam task force in BNM

Bank Negara developing portal to track scammer bank accounts

SC sees rapid increase in scam complaints since pandemic