Unfortunately my husband and I recently became another sad statistic when sophisticated scammers initiated a fraudulent bank transfer from our superannuation account with NAB.
This was bad enough, but the bank’s response was in our view wholly inadequate.
First, they allowed the scammers to increase our daily withdrawal limit from $2,500 to $40,000 without any secondary verification.
Second, and more alarmingly, they allowed $38,000 to be transferred to a brand-new payee at Macquarie Bank without any additional verification or placing the transfer on a temporary 24-hour hold.
After an opaque fraud investigation that lasted six weeks with no updates of any kind, the bank wrote to inform us that no money had been recovered.
That NAB is making billions in profits while delivering such inadequate protection for the important savings of long-term customers is a scandal.
Given older retirees like us are being increasingly targeted by this kind of fraud, it’s high time banks took more responsibility for protecting their customers.
Perhaps the only solution is to make banks liable for fraud losses like they currently are in other countries such as the UK.
Email, May 22
Ingrid Tristram, Holgate