By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, Feb 20: Malaysia should emulate Singapore in making banks compensate phishing scam victims and addressing security system deficiencies.
Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen cited a phishing scam case involving OCBC Bank Singapore from Dec 23 to Dec 30, 2021, where 790 account holders had their money transferred out without their permission and knowledge. The stolen money amounted to SGD13.7 million.
After that, OCBC on Jan 30, 2022, announced that it would fully compensate the victims as a “goodwill payment”, followed by the police’s successful arrest of 16 individuals involved in the syndicate in Feb 2022 and Monetary Authority Singapore’s (MAS) imposition of additional capital requirement of SGD330 million to OCBC Bank for security system deficiencies in May 2022.
“This shows how the problem is managed so that the interests of Singaporeans are well protected.
“Within one month, the bank paid compensation. In two months, the police arrested the criminals and thwarted the syndicate. In six months, MAS prosecuted OCBC and ensured the bank to improve its system security. All this was completed within six months!” he said during his Parliamentary debate today.
Unlike in Malaysia, Chong highlighted that the local banks do not compensate victims, the police did not thwart the syndicate, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) did not intervene, and the government is still looking into the cases for over two years.
He thus suggested the government oblige the banks to pay compensation to the victims in full or large amounts of it unless the banks can prove that the account holders themselves committed the fraud.
“In my opinion, if we require the banks to pay compensation for the online fraud, they will spend more to upgrade the e-banking security system and introduce stricter standard operating procedures (SOPs) and mechanisms for online money transfers,” he added.
According to Chong, from 2017 to June 2022, Malaysia recorded 89,798 online scams worth RM2.97 billion.
During the same period, the top six banks in the country recorded net profits worth RM125 billion. They were Maybank (RM42.3 billion), CIMB (RM22.8 billion), Public Bank (RM30.2 billion), RHB Bank (RM12.6 billion), Hong Leong Bank (RM15 billion), and AmBank (RM2.2 billion).
“The total losses did not even reach three per cent of the net profit of the six banks, what more to add in other banks. This concludes that the bank industry can cover the losses to compensate the victims,” he emphasised.
Additionally, Chong said he had referred ten scam cases to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) for intervention and further investigation.
He also explained five of the cases to the Dewan Rakyat, where one of the victims had lost RM32,000 through 14 money transfers just within 15 minutes, while another lost RM7,000 in just five minutes through seven transfers. The transactions were made without both victims’ permission and knowledge. — DayakDaily
