Financial safety, communications and the role of digital literacy

At the recent 7th Elder Abuse Conference in Hobart, Tasmania, Brendan French from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia gave an interesting presentation titled, ‘Staying safe in a world full of scams’

Here are six key takeaways.

1. Some typical characteristics of scams include, they are unsolicited, they play on emotions, they have a sense of urgency about them, they include threats and a request for data or funds.

2. 99% of adult Australians have been exposed to a scam. 29% deal with a scam attempt every single day and 66% deal with a scam attempt every week.

3. Reported scams have increased 84% since 2020, according to ScamWatch

4. People 65 and over account for 25% of losses.

5. Types of scams can include: investment scams – particularly targeting older CALD audiences, remote access scams, romance scams, phishing scams and others.

6. Scams are changing all the time and are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Brendan spoke about the following key areas.

1. Prevention – resources, training, awareness campaigns and digital notifications and other technological risk assessment systems and skilled teams for vulnerable customers.

2. Detection – staff training, technology is increasingly helping financial institutions to detect irregular activity e.g. Bio-Metric Markers.

If you would like to learn more about scams and how to protect yourself visit ScamWatch.gov.au