The chief executive and Chief Ombudsman of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), David Locke, has called on banks, digital platforms and telecommunications companies to better protect consumers against online threats and scams, especially amid the transition to digital banking and payments.

This comes as AFCA’s Annual Review for 2023-24 confirmed there were a record 104,861 complaints submitted by consumers and small businesses, up by eight per cent from the year prior. Of these complaints, 10 per cent were related to scams, with 10,440 regarding consumers being scammed out of money.

Locke said while scam complaints had increased year-on-year, there was a slight downturn in the last quarter of 2023-24.

“This is encouraging, but definitely not a cause for complacency,” he said.

“Although AFCA received on average 900 scam complaints a month in 2023-24, that tells only part of the story, because we saw much lower figures over the last three months of the year. Pleasingly this trend continued into the new financial year, with AFCA receiving an average of 500 complaints a month, significantly lower than in the same period last year.

“It appears that initiatives such as the Federal Government’s National Anti-Scams Centre and steps like account name checking by some of the banks are starting to have an impact.

“But there is still a long way to go, and we welcome the Government’s announced Scams Prevention Framework, with strong mandatory codes of conduct.”

Locke urged banks, digital platforms and telecommunications providers to “act now” and introduce consumer protection initiatives, citing the ongoing “operational risk associated with digital payment platforms”.

“We are being required to transition to digital banking; it is the responsibility of the banks to ensure it is safe for us to do so and that the systems properly protect our money,” he said.

“In many cases consumers would never have been scammed were it not for the actions or inactions of telecommunication companies and digital platforms. We will never tackle the scourge of scams and the human misery that scams cause unless all these sectors are required to take robust action to prevent, detect and disrupt scams, and to provide redress to consumers where that is appropriate.”