Those that require extensive changes in IT systems were to be completed by December 2022 at the latest. The three banks had committed to timelines to remedy these gaps, with most measures to be fully implemented by June this year, the minister said. In October, the financial regulator conveyed to each of the banks its specific findings and recommendations for remedial actions. The “focused supervisory review” was carried out by the MAS in the third quarter of 2021, in view of rising scam cases particularly in the last two years. Mr Wong noted that a recent review of fraud control adequacy in the digital banking channels of the three local banks had “surfaced a number of gaps”. “MAS will review these findings, take appropriate supervisory actions against the bank, and closely monitor the bank’s implementation of remedial measures,” said Mr Wong, who is also deputy chairman of the MAS. OCBC has engaged an independent external party to conduct a thorough review of its anti-scam processes, including fraud surveillance, incident management and customer service, as well as recommend necessary remedial actions on top of what it has already done. “At no time was the bank’s own systems breached,” he told the House. The minister stressed that the phishing scam was not a cyberattack on OCBC. To date, more than 90 per cent of customers have received these payouts, with the remaining reimbursements to be completed soon, Mr Wong said. It also said that all affected customers will receive “ full goodwill payouts” covering the amount they lost. OCBC has since apologised for falling short of expectations in customer service and response. Prior to this, MAS had received “only a few” complaints about customer service delays related to similar scams, he added. Despite the bank deploying additional resources, some affected customers experienced delays in reaching the bank to report the scams,” Mr Wong said. “It faced a surge in calls – from affected customers as well as other worried customers who had not themselves received phishing messages. OCBC should however have responded faster and more robustly at the first sign of the scams, which the bank had picked up in early December,” the minister said.īy the time OCBC informed the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Dec 24 that it had activated its incident response team, the bank’s call centre was “overwhelmed”. “These actions were taken at various stages during the month as the phishing scams built up. The bank also worked with authorities to block and take down the scam websites and stopped sending SMSes with clickable links to customers, among other efforts. This included warning customers about the spoofed SMSes through general advisories on its website and later on through SMS and emails. Mr Wong noted that OCBC, Singapore’s second-largest bank, took various actions throughout December to stem the phishing scam. The scam, which saw nearly 800 customers losing a combined S$13.7 million mostly over the year-end festive period, was “by far the most serious phishing scam” involving spoofed SMSes impersonating banks, he added in a ministerial statement in Parliament. SINGAPORE: OCBC should have “responded faster and more robustly” when it first detected signs of an SMS phishing scam in early December, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said on Tuesday (Feb 15).
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