ABA CEO Anna Bligh interview on FiveAA Adelaide

Graeme Goodings (Host): Hardly a day goes by that we don’t talk about scams. I mean, we’re ever alert, but the scammers seem to be one step ahead, half a step ahead, best, and all we can do is put out warnings to you on a regular basis. Joining me now is CEO of the Australian Banking Association, Anna Bligh, Anna, good morning to you.

Anna Bligh (Guest): Good morning. How are you?

Graeme Goodings: Well, thanks. What’s the latest warning we need to be flagged about?

Anna Bligh: Graham, one of the things we think it’s really important to get people to be a little bit more vigilant about is we’re coming into footy season, fans love to go and see their teams, and it does mean that it’s game on unfortunately for ticket scammers. They get onto the online marketplace platforms and offer tickets that actually don’t exist. So just really encouraging fans, obviously, they love to go and see their teams play. but scammers, take advantage of your enthusiasm for your team. Just be very careful about where you’re buying tickets, buy them from authorised, well known ticket sellers and companies, and those companies often have their own authorised resale platforms. They’re fine, too, but be very careful if you’re going on to an online marketplace.

Graeme Goodings: I guess people are looking for something cheap. They think, you know, I can get them cheaper somewhere else. That really is a fallacy. You know, you’ve got to pay full price, and you’ve got to go through the reputable source?

Anna Bligh: Absolutely, but for the really big games, you know, the sellout games, the finals, the things that really matter to locals, showdown games in South Australia, like the ones that are held each year between Crows and Port Adelaide, those sell out games, people are actually prepared to pay a lot more because they’re so keen to get there, and that’s when people are really at risk of losing a lot of money.

Graeme Goodings: What should we be on the lookout for? Because people do so much shopping and trading online its second nature these days, and they feel comfortable doing that. So, what are the warning signs?

Anna Bligh: Well, there’s a number of things people should look out for. I would say, be aware of highly discounted tickets. You know, if it sounds too good to be true, then maybe it is. And be very careful about people wanting you to transfer funds directly into a bank account or, even more concerning, a crypto currency platform. You should be paying for these sorts of things to recognised companies that are authorised to sell these sorts of tickets. Always try, as I said, to purchase from an authorised ticket seller, but scrutinise emails or texts that offer to sell you a ticket that’s not from a very well-known website like Ticketek or Ticketmaster, they’ll try and get to you any way they can. And you know, it really pays just to take a little step back and think, does this look right?

Graeme Goodings: Is there any more banks can do to combat scammers?

Anna Bligh: Well, it’s a constant battle banks up against some of the most sophisticated international criminal gangs who are capable of using industrial scale technology and often using social media platforms. The good news is, Australia is one of the few countries in the world that has seen both the incidents of scams drop and the amount and the amount of money being lost to scam drop. It’s more than 40 per cent drop over the last, you know, 18 months, two years, which you know is it’s a combination of a lot of investment in that time from banks into new technology. And all your listeners, many of them will have got messages from their bank saying, if you’re traveling overseas and you start buying something, you’ll get a message saying, ‘these transactions just happen on your account’, is this really you. So that sort of technology that banks have invested in keeping people safer.

But I also like to think that people have just got a little bit more savvy, they look at, the things that come through your phone saying, you haven’t paid your toll or ‘Mum’ I’ve dropped my phone in the toilet. People are getting a little bit more savvy, and maybe not answering unknown phone numbers because they’re scammers. And I think it’s a combination of banks investing in better technology, our telephone companies also investing in better surveillance systems on scammers, customers getting a little bit smarter and a little bit more careful. And I think, I would like to see our social media platforms step into this space a lot more, because most of the scams that we see with particularly big losses are coming from dodgy investment scams being advertised on these big social media platforms, romance scams that promise you the world. It’s a disaster. Everybody has got to do better. And as soon as you close one door with these sorts of things the criminals will find another way.

Graeme Goodings: They’ve come a long way, they’re far more sophisticated. I mean, it was the Nigerian prince who had $8 million he wanted to send you. And there was an email full of typing mistakes, and you could see through it in a second. Now, they are incredibly sophisticated.

Anna Bligh: You’re absolutely right, and the technology can often be a double-edged sword. AI is reaching a level of sophistication where, you know they can impersonate you, Graham, they can make a video of you that makes you look completely real with your voice, etc, and in the hands of criminals, that’s pretty scary, but it’s equally true that that same technology, AI basically recognises patterns, and so banks deploy it all the time to be searching through their systems literally every second of every minute of the day, looking for anything that’s unusual. So, when they start to see some behaviour on your account that is very different to the way you would normally use that account, they’ll red flag it. So, as I said, it’s a double-edged sword, and the challenge for banks and for government and for telcos and for social media platforms is to keep up with the criminals. And that’s part of the reality, that’s the cost of doing business as a bank in the modern world.

Graeme Goodings: How accessible are the banks? I mean, if you’re not sure, and it’s something you think your banks been in touch with you, is it as easy as picking up the phone saying, I’m not sure about this? Could this be a scam?

Anna Bligh:  Yes, it is. Banks all have call centres that take complaints and if you call and say, I think I’m being scammed, they can put you straight through to their fraud team. They have very big fraud teams, one of our major banks I visited recently, they’ve got more than 500 people just working on financial fraud and crime every day of the week. Now, the call centres in our banks are like the call centres in government departments and probably your radio station, there are times when they’re busier than others, but no, I encourage people to persevere. Just stay on the phone, some of them have an option where you they can you can register to have them call you back. The sooner your bank finds out about it, the sooner and the more likely it is that they can recover the money for you.

Graeme Goodings: Anna Bligh, great to chat. Thanks for your time.

Ends

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