'Do more to stop scammers', watchdog tells bankers

The chair of Australia's consumer watchdog is urging business leaders to re-double efforts to keep people safe amid a spike in financial scams.

More than $569 million was reported stolen in scams in 2022, but this only represents 13 per cent of the actual figure, ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb told executives at the Australian Financial Review Banking Summit.

More people are receiving scam messages, advertisements and phone calls, with investment scams accounting for two thirds of financial losses reported to Scamwatch in 2022.

The comments come after consumer finance company Latitude Group admitted 14 million Australian and New Zealand customers had records stolen from its systems.

The hack, detected a fortnight earlier, snared 7.9 million drivers licences, about 53,000 passport numbers and an additional 6.1 million records, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.

Ms Cass-Gottlieb said scammers were increasingly using new technology, including artificial intelligence which mimics a person's voice, to trick victims, complicating the challenge facing authorities.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told the summit the establishment of a national anti-scam centre will be at the core of a plan to make Australia the "destination of last resort" for scammers.

The government will seek to strengthen protections around companies storing consumer data, speed up the detection of scams, bolster the safety of transactions and help victims recover stolen ID more quickly.

"Consumer protection is core economic reform," Mr Jones said.

Ms Cass-Gottlieb said bankers needed to do more to prevent funds from reaching scammers, with traditional bank transfers among the most common payment methods.

"Financial institutions are in a unique position to help and more needs to be done to ensure banks are detecting and blocking scam transactions," she said.

Commonwealth Bank chief Matt Comyn said there needed to be a balance between allowing for faster transactions to increase convenience and putting friction back into the banking system to protect consumers.

The CEO of Australia's biggest bank said institutions needed to do more to prevent scammers from opening bank accounts.

"This is absolutely a shared problem," Mr Comyn said.

"A number of things need to change to improve customer protections."

Millions of people had their personal data stolen last year in a series of high-profile hacks, including of Medibank and Optus.