Education fends off fraud

Keeping free from exposure to online financial fraud is as much the responsibility of depositors as of banks and institutions that should be reinforced through education.

Security Bank’s executive vice president and head for retail banking Rahul Rasal underlined three aspects which banks undertake to shield accounts from scams, during an enlightening exchange with DAILY TRIBUNE editors on Wednesday’s Straight Talk.

“One is the core technology, two is the data being analyzed, and three, which is most critical and often missed out, is consumer education,” Rasal said.

He said that the most critical factor often gets the least importance.

“You know, for whatever reasons, people get your credit card details because you have left it somewhere and they try to do an online transaction. The online transaction generates an OTP (one-time pin),” he said.

An OTP is a very secure way of doing things because it can be generated only on your registered mobile number, Rasal pointed out.

“Now, the simplest way scammers operate is they have somebody call a person and say, ‘oh I’m calling from XYZ bank. You have received an OTP. I’m trying to help you and you pass on the OTP to me. So I’ll help you complete the conversation and the transaction.’ And people actually fall for that,” he said.

“There is no amount of technology on this planet that will help you come out of this particular aspect. It is only customer education,” he said.

He cited, for example, the typical brute force attacks, where typically scammers try several times to barge into an account.

“Now that’s where data and technology come into say the moment you see such a transaction. Nobody swipes their card 100 times in one minute. Data and technology together should trigger a clear message saying, are you doing this transaction?”

“So if you’re not the one who is doing it, we want to block it to prevent further issues, and that’s what we do,” Rasal explained.

On technology data and education, Rasal said this is where banks need to come together to counter bad practices in the market and to develop clear-cut customer education programs.

For example, you have the Credit Card Association of the Philippines on credit cards. On these aspects in terms of pushing banks to try and see how customers can be educated at Security Bank.

“Again, since our vision is to be the most customer-centric, we are consistently educating customers on what they should not do more often than what they should be doing,” Rasal said.

Banks give priority to the safety of customers to convenience to protect the customer’s assets.

It brings you this aspect of fraud because there are always bad players in the market.

“We are consistently investing in data and fraud prevention modules. We believe that we are the best in this market today. The patterns are detected highlighted, escalate it communicated to customers to prevent,” he indicated.

“Every bank customer is unique and has their requirement. You need to first look at what your requirement is and how does it match with the strength of the organization where you want to bank,” Rasal said on the choice of a bank depositors will be comfortable with.

If a 21-year-old person is, you know, coming to a bank, Security Bank would be a perfect fit because they could start learning their banking.

Similar to a chosen profession, banking should be where a depositor feels comfortable and is able to grow.