The chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means on Sunday called for a congressional inquiry to assess the level of retail client protection among banks in the country.
Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda said he is filing a resolution calling on the Committee of Banks and Financial Intermediaries to look into the reports that some clients of BDO have lost money due to online banking scam.
“I am also filing a resolution calling on the Committee of Banks and Financial Intermediaries to assess the [incident], and one with the Committee on Public Accounts to see how prepared our cybercrime prevention units are in implementing the anti-fraud provisions of the cybercrime law,” he said.
Salceda called this incident “a major challenge to financial inclusion,” as citizens who get scammed may be discouraged from availing of financial services.
He also called this a threat to the confidence of consumers–Filipinos and foreigners alike–in the security of the country’s financial system.
“Of course, scams are everywhere and in every country, but our own laws have very little to say directly about these financial scams,” Salceda said.
“You look at the releases of banks about such scams, and you see that they place the onus of protecting money on their own users. They banked with you for a reason. They could have just hid their money under the mattress. You charge fees to protect their money, and they’re not cheap fees compared to that of other countries. The least you could do is beef up your security measures,” he added.
According to the lawmaker, “the service fees charged by the bank in question, BDO, accounted for around 14 percent of their total income as of their latest quarterly report. That’s one of the highest among major banks. You would expect them to deliver better on the service security front, especially since that’s what their consumers pay for.”
Financial protection
Also, Salceda, principal author of House Bill 6768, or the Consumer Financial Protection Act, called on the Senate to pass its own version of the law to protect users of banking and other monetary services, in response to recent incidents of phishing, hacking, and other financial services scams.
“Unfortunately, we do not have a comprehensive framework for protecting the users of online financial services just yet. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas [BSP] deals with issues on a per-circumstance basis, but our laws are not yet there. As a result, scammers feel emboldened to cheat others of their hard-earned money, because the BSP cannot possibly be everywhere, monitoring financial products,” Salceda said.
“I call on the Senate to pass the measure urgently, especially as our financial regulators also support the measure,” he added. According to Salceda, the bill allows consumers to elevate their complaints to the BSP, and the BSP to file independent civil action, if the banks do not handle complaints in a satisfactory way.
“Cybersecurity and user protection is still particularly lacking. User verification systems, identification features, are still very susceptible. Users are also not properly or adequately informed about scams,” he said.
Source : From the Web