SINGAPORE – OCBC Financial institution might be conducting an intensive probe to establish the deficiencies in its processes and implement the mandatory measures to deal with them after a spate of SMS phishing scams, mentioned the Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Monday (Jan 17).
Following the assessment, MAS, the nation’s monetary sector regulator, will think about the suitable supervisory actions.
Practically 470 clients misplaced at the least $8.5 million to fraudulent fund transfers in December final 12 months after scammers posed as OCBC and despatched SMSes with hyperlinks to phishing websites to victims.
“MAS takes a severe view of the current phishing scams involving OCBC Financial institution. They’ve considerably impacted a number of clients,” mentioned Ms Ho Hern Shin, MAS’ deputy managing director for monetary supervision.
She added that the authority expects “all affected clients to be handled pretty”, noting that OCBC has begun making payouts to victims of the phishing scams following a assessment of every case.
The monetary regulator has additionally been following up with OCBC on points regarding the incident, together with the financial institution’s incident response and customer support, which OCBC has acknowledged ought to have been higher
“MAS expects all monetary establishments to have strong measures for fraud prevention, detection and remediation, and to supply immediate help to clients who’ve been victims of scams,” mentioned Ms Ho.
“We’re working with the Affiliation of Banks in Singapore on industrywide measures that will must be taken to make sure that digital banking stays safe, environment friendly and trusted.”