By Annelia Nixon

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Cyber-related frauds and scams such as ‘smishing’ are ever-increasing and “largely being perpetrated out of Jamaica”, senior Bahamian bank executives warned yesterday.

Denise Turnquest, Commonwealth Bank’s president, told the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) accountants’ week conference that once personal information is provided to a fraudster they can swiftly withdraw funds from the victim’s account.

Warning that providing personal banking information to fraudsters relieves banks of any responsibility, she added: “And so, you know, it's really important for you to understand, I think if you get nothing out of what we say today, no bank will ever call you to ask you for your password.

“And the challenge with this scheme is that whether inadvertently or not, you have provided the fraudster with everything that they need to move money from your account. You've given them your user name, your login password, and then you've given them the one-time password to authorise the transfer out of your account. And so at the end of the day, the banks have no responsibility, because you have provided the fraudster with everything that they need.”

Ms Turnquest said smishing is a lucrative business but IT teams are working to stop and prevent the attacks. She added that most incidents are perpetrated from Jamaica but there have been arrests in The Bahamas.

“We've determined that this is largely being perpetrated out of Jamaica, and there have been some arrests, and I want to make that one very clear. So persons have been arrested locally with significant amounts of cash,” the Commonwealth Bank chief said.

Roger Archer, Scotiabank’s vice-president and district head for the northern Caribbean, said financial services has been in transition for years as it pertains to digital payments and he does not see any turning back.

“It has made access the banking a lot easier,” Mr Archer said. “When you think about the ability to make payments in other countries, there was a time you needed to physically visit the branch to do that. You don't need to do that anybmore. You can make transactions digitally. So the convenience for our clients is something that I think everyone likes.”

Mr Archer said Scotiabank has invested in tools that will ensure the safety of clients and staff. “What we've started to do is to invest more in tools that help clients to manage that risk, and help us also identify the risk as early as possible,” he said, “whether it is in behavioural attributes.

“So you know, we are able to tell now who the person is conducting the transaction. Let's say that person is left handed, but the person doing the transaction is right-handed. Those are things that we're actually able to tell at the point in the transaction, because of some of the investments that we've made. 

“We've also started to invest in educating clients. So internally, we have what we call a phishing campaign… It is not only to our clients, but it's also to our staff. And it's also ensuring that we keep our institutions safe,” Mr Archer added.

“So we've entered into this framework where we send phishing to our team members on a periodic basis so that they're educated on what not to click. That has helped team members to become a lot more aware. They're able to communicate with clients on the importance of not clicking on links. 

“But in addition to that, what we've started to look at is how can we educate our clients and also doing similar programmes with our clients. So we can send phishing e-mails to those clients. We can have something pop up to say: This is just a test. You could have been defrauded, Ensure that you're not clicking on these things going forward. Those are some of the programmes that we have put in place.”

Derek Rolle, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, said the regulator encourages financial literacy through a number of programmes. He spoke to the Get Money Smart campaign, which aims to educate the public about financial terms and products. It has also partnered with commercial banks for the Live Digital Campaign, which helps “the public to understand what options exist in the market for them to live their lives in a more digital way”.