ASIC to head Asia Pacific anti-scam group to stem billions in losses

ASIC joins New Zealand and Singapore in a regulators working group to stem billions of losses to scammers.

ASIC chairman Joe Longo in London after the Australian financial regulators agreed to head an Asian Pacific scammers working group to tackle fraud. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission has set up a new working group involving regulators in the Asia Pacific to address the country’s $2.7bn losses to scammers and other online harm.

ASIC will lead on strategies to engage with tech platforms to mitigate scam and online harms, while the Monetary Authority of Singapore will establish an information sharing network to better identify scams.

New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority will take the lead on various global initiatives such as collating ways to enhance the investor alerts portal for the global regulatory group IOSCO. The three authorities will share information about mitigating and disrupting scams, the trends in scams and online harms and data analysis of the tactics used, victim profiles and behavioural insights.

ASIC chairman Joe Longo said Australia lost $2.74bn in scams in 2023, the majority of which was investment scams, followed by romance fraud.

As part of Australia’s National Anti Scam centre, ASIC has also taken down questionable websites, with around 5000 removed in the past 11 months. But the regulator has been criticised for not doing enough to publicise international scams such as a crypto currency fake celebrity endorsement which German officials believe has ensnared tens of thousands of Australian victims.

Mr Longo said ASIC had received additional government funding to help stop people being victims: “We already share information about scam types and methods across our different countries, but this group will help build up capacity and co-operation and bring our joint resources to bear on the issue.’’

Mr Longo attended the IOSCO (International Organisation of Securities Commissions) annual conference in Athens this week and he said ASIC is on track and with the right priorities, with commonality of issues facing financial controllers across the globe.

In an interview in the city of London, just around the corner from Threadneedle Street, Mr Longo

said of the annual conference: “I was struck this time about how consistent what we are looking at; the global people are also looking at. These are scams, sustainable finance, artificial intelligence and private and public markets which affects everybody with Australian super.’’

He said dealing with scammers has “become a huge priority’’.

“The ones causing the most financial losses are investment scams,’’ Mr Longo said.

“But the key thing for me coming out of this conference is that in Australia, we’re not behind.’’

A review of ASIC, headed by critical NSW senator Andrew Bragg is expected to be handed down soon.

Mr Longo said if the final report echoed Senator Bragg’s “consistent views” then no one should be surprised, and he insisted that ASIC “punched above its weight internationally” with overseas compatriots having a very high regard for ASIC.

The IOSCO conference confirmed the introduction of the International Ethics Standards for Sustainability Assurance, which Mr Longo said was “really significant” to get right as it would enable efficiently allocation of capital to fund the transition from carbon to renewables and give confidence to the big banks, governments, hedge funds and investors.

“We want to get away from coal to cleaner energy,’’ he said, adding, “we want projects to succeed, and the way they’re going to succeed is that the investors understand what they’re investing in, what the risks are, these disclosures. So we get the standards right, we implement them right. It will support sustainable funding.’’

Mr Longo said ASIC would take a “facilitation approach’’ to help companies introduce the standards but if there was evidence of intentional noncooperation or greenwashing, then the approach may differ.