Senior Australian Securities and Investments Commission officials raised concerns about the watchdog’s ability to cope with a surge in complex financial scams, and accused the government of losing interest in a process to thwart schemes estimated to cost consumers billions.
Internal ASIC emails sent last July, obtained by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald under freedom-of-information laws, show rising concerns within the corporate and markets regulator about “the exponential growth in volume, sophistication and complexity of scams in general”.
Senior ASIC officials have privately criticised the federal government for losing interest in scams. Credit:The Age
The emails also show concerns within ASIC about the government losing interest in a process to develop rules for banks to safeguard consumers against losses from scams, with the Treasury department sending junior staff to a meeting about the issue. “We are concerned that the issue of tackling scams does not have sufficient traction inside Treasury and government,” one of the emails reads.
One ASIC official, whose name was redacted, said ASIC was under pressure to find a “silver bullet” but it lacked the necessary powers to tackle scams in a meaningful way, adding there needed to be a “whole of government” approach to the problem.
Financial scams have risen since the onset of COVID-19, and the competition watchdog estimates Australians lose $2 billion to scams each year.
ASIC is reviewing the ePayments code, which the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has argued is an opportunity to introduce a range of obligations on the banking industry to improve systems to protect customers from scams.
The July emails show senior ASIC officials had criticised the government for failing to mandate the code. “There have been three reviews since 2014 … recommending that the code be mandated. However, any progress towards implementation has not been achieved to date,” an email says.
“The issue of addressing scams seems to be nobody’s job in particular but everyone’s job in a small way,” a comment reads. “We have limited (or no) tools to do what we’d like to do.”
