New Zealand to get an anti-scam centre; fears banks will own and run it

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson has become the Government’s scam buster general.

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It looks like the country will get an anti-scam centre, but there are fears it will be bank-funded, bank-owned and bank-run.

Last week, newly minted Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson held the second anti-scam strategy roundtable with banks, telcos, social media companies, the Banking Ombudsman, Consumer NZ, the Department of Internal Affairs and police.

A crime wave orchestrated by organised criminal gangs overseas has swept over the country, perhaps costing New Zealanders as much as $1 billion a year, though one estimate is higher even than that at $2.3b.

New Zealand has lagged other countries in the Pacific region like Australia and Singapore on its anti-scam response, leaving it a “soft target” for scammers, but Simpson said the roundtable had “settled” on one of four options put on the table.

Simpson told The Post: “The group last week considered a range of options going forward, and we have settled on one. I don't want to go into in detail at the moment because I need to brief my parliamentary and cabinet colleagues.”

The Post understands that the option settled on was a bank-operated scam centre, possibly run by Get Verified Limited, a company set up by the banks.

More than 7,000 people were freed from cyber scam compounds in Myanmar, but many remain trapped in limbo. With overcrowded camps and insufficient aid, survivors face uncertain futures. Advocates urge swift action to end the crisis.

Get Verified operates the industry-wide “confirmation of payee” system designed to make it harder for people to accidentally pay the wrong people when making electronic banking payments, or to be duped by scammers.

Option one was the untenable status quo, while the fourth was a full-blown government-run, government-funded anti-scam centre putting the Government in the driving seat on the war on scams.

“The concept we’re looking at is a New Zealand gateway, if I can put it that way,” Simpson said, but it wouldn’t have police operating the gateway.

“Police don’t see themselves as being the lead entity, and I would agree with that, but certainly police have a crucial role and they have an enforcement role as well,” Simpson said.

The need for a “unified” central operation to which banks can report scam activity, creating intelligence allowing a coordinated fight against scams was agreed by participants in the first roundtable in December last year.

It was also key for New Zealand to be able to work on a regional basis with other countries, Simpson said.

In the coming days the Banking Association intends to publish its proposal for how and when banks would be liable to compensate fraud victims, something there has been no public consultation on.

Banks were ordered to make changes to their voluntary compensation code by former Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly who resigned after an incident with a staff member earlier this year.

Scams are costing New Zealanders dearly.

However, the Government has been warned to expect banks to produce a proposal that protects their interests, The Post understands.

“Entities like big banks have a social responsibility to ensure that they have everything in place that is needed to ensure adequate compensation when the circumstances indicate that they have let the side down, or let down an individual, in terms of their internal processes,” Simpson said.

The Government had been watching progress in Australia, which passed laws in February requiring the likes of banks to “prevent, detect, disrupt, respond to and report scams” on pain of fines of up to A$50 million, he said.

Consumer NZ told the Government at the December roundtable that the lack of mandatory requirements meant “players” like banks “don’t have the incentive to act to detect and prevent scams”.

Simpson said: “My next step is to take those recommendations, circulate them amongst my cabinet and government colleagues… and then go back to that roundtable with a set of proposals.

“That cabinet approval I expect to occur in the not-too-distant future. Certainly we’re talking probably months rather than years,” he said.

The lack of reporting laws,and a unified central agency collecting scam intelligence, means that there are only estimates of the scale of the crime wave that has flooded over the country, largely through crooks contracting people, and advertising, through largely unregulated social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

“The figures that are banded about, frankly, are very scary. The reported loss last year was about $200m. I think that’s probably conservative. The estimated real loss, because a lot of it goes unreported, is probably something north of $1b,” Simpson said.

He had been “pleasantly surprised” at the level of co-operation and willingness from social media companies, including Meta, the operator of Facebook.

But, he said: “These social media companies are frankly very focused on their large international marketplaces and we’re a very tiny player.”

Meta owns Instagram, which many people now use to message people instead of texting.

However, he said: “Governments like ours are going to increasingly put pressure on them to come to the party in terms of using the technology that’s available to them to help reduce New Zealanders being victims of what now is a very prevalent scamming environment.”

Some fear social media companies are engaged in an expansion of their businesses, which will set back the fight against scams.

Telecoms companies have built anti-spam, and anti-scam text message filters, but text messages are dying as social media companies lure more people into messenger apps, which telcos like One NZ and Spark have no visibility over.

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