In all my years of writing about the Australian economy I haven’t written many complimentary stories about our big banks, except in the Global Financial Crisis when our big four banks were so safe compared to most banks in the world that they were in the top 20 on the planet! Yep, thanks to government-backing, they are safe, but their behaviour has been disappointing. That’s why the 2017 Hayne Royal Commission was needed to lift the standards of the financial services industry.

The history of bad behaviour was such that I made the following observation in a 2022 story I wrote: “In the old days of the comedy show Fast Forward, they used to do a weekly bagging of banks. One night I recall they finished the skit with the old CBA advertisement that asked the question: “Which bank?” To that the voiceover guy said: “Every bloody bank!”

Well, at long last, one bank has broken ranks to act on behalf of customers, with news that Westpac is going hard against scammers. This is what the SMH’s David Kings tells us about this big change: “Westpac customers will be able to speak to staff at their bank via its banking app using a verified call, in a move the company hopes will help reduce the hundreds of millions of dollars Australians are losing to banking scams each year.”

King explained the initiative this way: “In a bid to block ever-more-sophisticated impersonation scams, Westpac will on Tuesday roll out a new security product in partnership with telco Optus that allows customers to receive Westpac-branded calls via the bank’s app, which is used by 3.6 million people each month. The calls, which will be verified by Optus, will also show the reason for the bank getting in touch with a customer.”

We lost $3 billion to scam scumbags last year and banks have been slow out of the blocks to protect their customers. This move by Westpac is a big one.
Right now, British banks are reimbursing scammed customers, and it will be compulsory from October.
ASIC says our banks only refund 2-5% of losses their customers have copped because of scammers, while they only stopped 13% of scams targeting bank customers. I repeat — this is a big move from Westpac.

And the beauty of our banking system, which economists call an “oligopoly” (that’s a term that applies to an industry with a small number of powerful players) means that when one bank takes a significant action, the others are bound to be forced to follow.

Afterall, who wouldn’t switch to Westpac if the others don’t offer similar protections? The answer would be: “Anyone who doesn’t mind losing money to scammers!”
In recent times, scammers impersonate bank staff saying they’re from the fraud team and come up with some information about the customer’s accounts to get them to move their funds to a new account, which belongs to the scammer!

This is clearly a great step in the right direction, but Westpac needs to educate us all about how it actually works, so the scammers don’t find a way to trick customers that they’re the verifiers. If they get this right, this innovation will be a ripper, as it will force other banks and big companies to stop telling us that the threats of the Internet are too hard to beat!
It's time we had politicians who said, “enough is enough” and demanded big online businesses to protect their customers. I hope one day I can praise a local political leader who steps up and shows that they really care about the voters who make their career dream come true.