Roger Beaumont: Banking Association CEO on the Anti-Scam Alliance

A belief all sectors will need to step up to deal with online scammers. 

The new Anti-Scam Alliance brings together government agencies, banks, telcos, digital platforms, and consumer groups. 

The task force will share data about scams to shut them down in real time. 

Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont says it will make a difference if all participants play their part. 

He says particularly social media companies and digital platforms need to do what they can to interrupt scams. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, finally some good news about scams. The government's
going to address the country's scamming issues head with an
anti scam alliance. So, with some reports suggesting the scams
costing kind of me up to two billion dollars annually,
people are saying it's well over due. The New Zealand
Banking Association chief executive is Roger Beaumont, who joins me.
Now what is he Roger?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh, good morning, Andrew, good to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
So what does this alliance actually do? What does it mean?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, what it means, excuse me, is a coordinated approach
across a number of industries and government agencies around tackling
scams because no one industry can actually deal with it
on their own. The banks have stepped up and done
a pretty good job of putting processes into place to
protect customers, but for it to truly be an effective ecosystem,

(00:48):
it needs everybody working together and that's what the SAME's
to do.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Should we have done that right from the go?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Oh, we've been calling for this for a couple of years, Andrew,
We've said that actually we can't do this on our own.
We need government leadership to actually bring all the individual
entities together to work in a coordinated way, so you
know it's good that it's happened.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
So scams, are they becoming worse or are we getting
on top of them?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, I think just the awareness and education that's gone
on by some of the awful stories that you've seen
play out in the media have themselves been an incredible
educational device. We also have put some processes into place
that have I think made a different So at Easter
we finished rolling out a thing called confirmation a payee

(01:38):
and you've probably experienced this if you've paid someone new
or made a one off payment by your banking app
or your online banking and what that does, for example,
is it tries to match that the person you're paying
matches the account number that that money is going into,
and you'll get a message back, but that's either a

(01:59):
complet match or a partial match, or no match at all,
and it'll give you that comfort or assurance that it's
right or to go or if not, to go back
and check some of those details.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, I've had a few of those. It's a little
bit of a hassle, but at the same time, it's
a little bit of a hassle but it's even more
of a hassle to lose money, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I mean, you can't have it all. You've got a
If you want to have protections in place, there are
going to be there is that's going to put friction
in the payment system and process. But that friction, I
think is a very small price to pay for having
surety about who you're sending money to.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
A right good luck. Now, the thing I learned last night,
I had no idea we had two hundred crypto ATMs
in this country that being outboored. Do you have an
opinion on this.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, it's interesting that a number of we're just following
a number of jurisdictions around the world that have banned
crypto ATMs. I think the UK did it first in
twenty twenty two from memory, and so that is a
global trend now for that to happen. And crypto is
a known tool for criminals to shift money around the globe,

(03:04):
and so I think anything that puts in place processes
that reduced the opportunities for scammers and crims to be
active is a good thing.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Would it be fair to say that the banking industry
hates crypto?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I wouldn't go. We're not haters, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Roger, I got to go, I gotta go. Lovely to
talk to you Roger Beaumont, who is the New Zealand
Banking Association's Chief Executive.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
to news talks. It'd be from five am weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.