Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

The government plans to bring together public sector agencies and banking industry players in an effort to step up efforts to combat fraud in New Zealand.

To mark the start of Fraud Awareness Week, it has been revealed that New Zealanders have lost almost $200 million to scammers in the past year.

Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly said the number was likely higher because only about one in five scams were reported.

“People who think they’ve been cheated feel ashamed. In fact, it shouldn’t. We need more people to stand up and say they’ve been cheated, because when it happens, agencies can step in and deal with it,” he said.

“When people don’t talk about it, then other people are being cheated, if I can use that word, so it’s just being open and educating people.”

New Zealand has no centralized, instant method of reporting scams, which has hindered efforts to respond quickly. Bayly said detection, prevention and response largely fell between the cracks of industry and government.

“We don’t have good enough coordination, both at the government level and certainly within the industry portals, and I mean telcos, banking and social media providers.”

Bayly was appointed as lead minister to coordinate the work and bring together industry and government partners. He said he would have three steps:

• Coordinates work between ministerial portfolios and public sector agencies to improve information sharing.
• Collaborate with industry to develop industry-led solutions within specific sectors (e.g. banks) and across sectors (such as information sharing between telecoms and banks).
• Collaborate with ministerial counterparts in Australia and Singapore to establish a coordinated regional approach.

Bayly said in New Zealand, people were most likely to be scammed through social media. But Australians were hit hard by SMS or texting scams, while Singapore was dealing with mass email URL scams.

Banks in New Zealand were due to roll out payee confirmation by the end of November, which Bayly said was a good start.

“But I also think it’s the government’s duty to act and coordinate the activity,” he said.

“The biggest thing that I’ve found, talking to the TV companies and going into their fight rooms or their security rooms, or over the counter, is actually making sure that we have a smoother and more immediately of data between industry groups so that people are much more aware of when things are happening and react much more quickly.”

Earlier this year, the banking sector called on the government to support an anti-fraud centre, targeting mule accounts.

Labor had also campaigned for an anti-fraud unit, which would have brought government and industry together under the Financial Markets Authority.

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