Australia’s Commonwealth Bank says it has cut customer scam losses in half in FY24 through a combination of new anti-scam technologies, cross-industry collaborations and customer education.

Anti-scam technology introduced by the bank includes Confirmation of Payee system NameCheck, impersonation scam blocker CallerCheck, and in-branch verification tool CustomerCheck.

CommBank was also the first bank to integrate into Australia’s new anti-scam intelligence loop, making it faster to report and remove scams across big tech, telcos and banks – with the bank recently submitting more than 1,500 entries containing scam phone numbers and URLs for blocking and takedown.

James Roberts, CommBank general manager of group fraud, comments: “CommBank customer scam losses halved compared to the previous financial year, with CommBank NameCheck technology preventing scam payments worth more than an estimated $40 million. NameCheck also stopped over $370 million in mistaken payments in the year to June 2024.

“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.”

In 2023, the highest reported scam losses were where contact occurred via a phone call, via social media or via an email.

“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,” says Roberts. “This requires a whole-of-ecosystem response from big tech, telcos and banks, focused on the source of scams.”