But he says more work is needed, and to truly rein in the threat, banks are just one part of the solution.

Scams often reach consumers through social media videos, search engine ads, text messages, and voice calls, so tackling this issue requires a collaborative approach. Banks, telcos and tech platforms - as well as governments, law enforcement agencies - and others must work together, share knowledge and insights, and form partnerships to detect and prevent scams.

“We’re all part of the ecosystem, so pressure needs to be applied across that ecosystem – so there is less money that needs to be sent to scammers, less to chase, and Australians are safer.”

Demonstrating the power of anti-scam collaborations across sectors, Roberts cites CommBank’s partnerships with major telecommunication companies, which have yielded innovative anti-scam technologies for the benefit of the partners’ mutual customers.

CommBank’s partnership with Quantium Telstra to create the AI-powered Scam Indicator tool highlights their efforts to detect high-risk phone scams. This tool helps prevent criminals from tricking customers into transferring money while they are on the phone and has been particularly successful in catching remote access scams.

Additionally, the Call Stop technology, developed by Optus, has already blocked over 470,000 bank impersonation scams as a result of the SMS scam content CBA shared with Optus. CommBank and Vodafone are also sharing SMS scam intelligence with each other in near real-time to disrupt scammers and help block fraudulent payments proactively.

These are among a growing pipeline of collaborative efforts the bank is pursuing, which includes a recently unveiled partnership with Macquarie University and its AI-focused spinout, APATE.AI. In this latest and Australian-first pilot, conversational AI-powered anti-scam bots will help to extract scam intelligence and combat scam phone calls.

“By bringing to the table some of the brightest minds – across telcos, other banks, social media platforms, academics and technologists – we can generate more of these cutting-edge solutions to this very nasty societal problem,” Roberts says. “While in most areas we’re generally in fierce competition with our peers, this is one area in which targeted collaboration and sharing of intellectual property can deliver benefits to customers.”

The disruption of scams at a national level is poised to accelerate through the recently formed Anti-Scams Intelligence Loop. Co-ordinated by the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) and funded by the four major banks, the idea behind the loop is to speed up intelligence sharing among ecosystem players.

For example, when a bank customer reports a dodgy road toll link, the link can be shared very quickly through the loop – with the relevant telco to block any further content being shared more widely; with big tech players to block access to the underlying websites; and with the National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) to take down the scam website.

“To date, a number of organisations have signed up to the loop and are sharing data, including the first of the big social media companies, Meta,” Roberts says. “But it’s still early days. The focus now is for members to real time integrate with the loop using APIs – rather than the current manual processes – so there is no delay on providing, ingesting and acting on intelligence.

“CommBank was the first entity to integrate with the intel loop, and at last count, we’ve shared more than 1500 dodgy SMS links and social media profiles with other ecosystem players via the intel loop. As more organisations do the same, especially telcos and the other social platforms, intelligence sharing via the intel loop will increase and cause real damage to the profit model of scammers.”

“It’s these types of ongoing ecosystem-wide efforts that are playing a vital role in ultimately making Australia a far less desirable place for organised criminal scammers to operate,” Roberts says.

Things you should know

This article is intended to provide general information of an educational nature only. It does not have regard to the financial situation or needs of any reader and must not be relied upon as financial product advice. You should consider seeking independent financial advice before making any decision based on this information. The information in this article and any opinions, conclusions or recommendations are reasonably held or made, based on the information available at the time of its publication but no representation or warranty, either expressed or implied, is made or provided as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of any statement made in this article.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia ABN 48 123 123 124, AFSL and Australian credit licence 234945.

[1] Targeting scams: report of the ACCC on scams activity 2023.