Ms Sylvia Lim (Aljunied): Sir, in this environment of pervasive online scams, the Government should ensure that bank customers are adequately and fairly protected – both in prevention and in compensation. On this, I will raise two points today: developments in Australia and on Financial Industry Disputes Resolution Centre Ltd (FIDReC).
First, on developments in Australia. In November last year, the Australian treasury issued a consultation paper on proposed industry codes for the private sector in combating scams – named the Scams Code Framework. The proposed Australian framework is consumer focused. The extensive obligations on banks, include training of staff, detecting, blocking, verifying and tracing scams; and the need to implement anti-scam systems that are responsive to new products, services, designs and technologies. Importantly, it requires businesses to take all reasonable steps to prevent the misuse of its services by scammers, “so that an undue burden is not placed on consumers to prevent scams.” As far as Singapore is concerned, I acknowledge MAS’ work, particularly in coming up with the two consultation papers in October on the Shared Responsibility Framework for phishing scams and on the proposed enhancements to the E-payments User Protection Guidelines (EUPG).
That said, the EUPG paper while imposing some duties on financial institutions, also has a whole section on how consumers should also be subject to enhanced duties – including preventive actions such as updating the browsers of devices and patching operating systems with the latest security updates. How does the MAS assess whether these duties are reasonable, given the wide demographic profile of consumers?
Second, FIDReC announced in January a public consultation on raising its monetary limit in adjudication cases – from $100,000 to $150,000. As few customers have the resources to sue their banks in Court, FIDReC is an important low-cost avenue for bank customers to seek redress. Should FIDReC consider raising its limit to $200,000, which is the daily threshold for PayNow transactions for consumers?
The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Alvin Tan): Let me turn to Ms Sylvia Lim’s cut. Ms Sylvia Lim asked about efforts to safeguard bank customers’ interests. I would like to thank her, as well as Mr Derrick Goh in his speech yesterday, for raising this very important topic, and also for recognising and acknowledging the hard work that MAS – in partnership with our banking industry – has put in place to protect customers against scams.
Other Members of Parliament, such as Dr Tan Wu Meng, Dr Lim Wee Kiak, Miss Rachel Ong, Mr Saktiandi Supaat, Ms Yeo Wan Ling and Mr Gerald Giam, have also spoken about this and advocated strongly about this topic in this House.
In her Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) COS speech, Minister of State Sun Xueling will more comprehensively outline the efforts by Government agencies and private sector entities to raise our collective defences against scams. These include initiatives and measures that have been explored under the guidance of MAS, such as the banks’ recent anti-malware controls, and the Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) to strengthen the direct accountability of financial institutions and telcos to consumers.
Our efforts are bearing fruit, especially for unauthorised transactions. The number of reported phishing cases in 2023 decreased by 16% compared to 2022, and the amounts lost decreased by 14%. The incidence of malware enabled scams has also reduced significantly after major retail banks introduced anti-malware security features on their banking apps.
Despite this progress, we are not resting on our laurels; we will continue to push on. MAS will build on this progress by continuing to work with banks to further strengthen anti-scam controls. We will better safeguard funds by encouraging people to adopt Money Lock, and enhancing Money Lock’s functionality.
MAS is also working with banks to improve their fraud surveillance capabilities and to strengthen authentication measures at account logins and when making payment transactions. Admittedly, these will add more friction to the banking process, but we acknowledge and understand that these will better safeguard customers’ interests and also reduce the amounts lost through scams in the longer term.
I would like to highlight to Members that today, the bulk of scams and amounts lost are cases involving authorised transactions, as compared to unauthorised transactions. Authorised transactions are transactions where victims willingly transfer monies to scammers under social engineering and deception. We cannot address such scams directly through banking sector-related safeguards alone. What we need is a vigilant public. We must all take steps to protect ourselves, by keeping up with new scam typologies which are rapidly evolving; and also banking controls, and checking for signs of scams. MAS and banks will continue to support national public education efforts, including the Government’s broader public education under the “Add, Check and Tell” anti-scam campaign.
I thank Ms Lim for her suggestions. We have made some collective progress together, but we must and we will continue to strengthen all of these initiatives that I have outlined to help further safeguard bank customers’ interests.
The Chairman: Ms Sylvia Lim.
Ms Sylvia Lim: Thank you, Chairman. I have two broad clarifications for the Minister of State. During his response he mentioned several times about closely the MAS is working with banks to come up with guidelines, preventive measures. But he did not say anything about how MAS was working with consumers at all, before the draft guidelines are issued.
For instance, like I mentioned in my cut, the EUPG paper that sets out the enhanced duties of consumers. Were any consumers consulted about whether these duties are reasonable before the draft guidelines came out? So, the first clarification is about how MAS works with consumers, if at all, before it comes up with such guidelines in this area.
Secondly, on the Australian example, I did point this out to him earlier that I was going to raise it. I think he would have noticed from what was being proposed by the Australian Treasury was that actually there would be a consumer protection body at the top of the apex when it came to looking at consumer interests in the scam space. This body actually has an overarching responsibility that cuts across sectors – banking, telcos, digital platforms – all that would sort of come under that consumer protection umbrella and there is going to be legislation, I believe, intended for this.
I find that in Singapore, this is missing. There is no consumer protection overarching body that seems to be looking across the different industry sectors on whether consumers are getting a fair deal. So, I wonder if he can comment on whether he thinks that such a body would actually add value to our interest in protecting consumers.
Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, I thank Ms Sylvia Lim for her feedback. Maybe I will just add, on the EUPG first. The EUPG, as you compared to the Australia’s E-Payments Code; there is a list of consumer duties within the EUPG, as the Member had mentioned. And these are cyber hygiene duties that the consumer ought to perform. And that is why as a whole, I think that is very, very important, not just for duties by banks, telcos; but also in order to address scams, the consumers need to play an important role.
They are also in line with public education efforts that the Government has been reinforcing. We also expect banks to treat customers fairly and take into account the specifics of the scams and the profile of the victims.
We are assessing this feedback on both in SRF as well as EUPG, and in many of the different consultations, we reach out to consumers. That is one. And we get their feedback.
The second on the SRF, the topic about the Australian example is the Scams Code Framework. The Scams Code Framework is quite similar to our SRF. SRF will be operational by the first half of this year. In the same way, it also looks at duties by financial institutions as well as telcos. I think the Australian example has other sectors as well that are inputted into this. We had mentioned in the SRF that we will continue to review it and see how these duties can be applied and where possible and where it is appropriate, we are looking at different countries’ experiences with it and we may expand it. The SRF is not set in stone. We will review and it will evolve over time.
But I would also like to share with the Member that the experiences in different countries are also very different. The scam typologies are also very different. The way that the banks, the telcos, operators and other aspects within the ecosystem that deal with this issue is also very different. So, I want to assure her and I assure the Members that we continue to take all of these into account.
We studied the Australian Code. It is very similar to SRF. But we will continue to review them over time.
The Chairman: We are reaching the end of guillotine time. If there are any clarifications, I can probably allow one or two very short ones. Any clarifications for Minister Chan? Ms Lim.
Ms Sylvia Lim: Chairman, thank you. In the interest of time, just on the FIDReC’s jurisdictdion.
The Chairman: Minister of State Tan, a short reply please.
Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, just quickly to Ms Sylvia Lim, just two things. One, the earlier question about the overarching consumer protection. First, we have the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) which deals with general enquiries, and FIDReC to deal with financial disputes. I think we just look at how other jurisdictions handle that and we have a framework and a process where it fits our jurisdiction.
On FIDReC, the Member would have noted that FIDReC is currently consulting on the terms of reference, one of which is to raise the current adjudication award limit from $100,000 to $150,000. This consultation closes on, in fact, 29 February, this week. So, please feel free to submit any feedback on this.
Prime Minister’s Office
28 February 2024
https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/#/sprs3topic?reportid=budget-2344
Office of the Leader of the Opposition 