More bank staff to be located at S'pore's Anti-Scam Centre this year

The centre has partnered more than 60 stakeholders including banks, telcos and e-commerce platforms since 2020. PHOTO: ST FILE

SINGAPORE - The cooperation between banks and the police is expected to become more robust in 2022, especially with local banks planning to have their staff physically located inside the police's Anti-Scam Centre (ASC).

Currently, only DBS Bank has a staff member there.

But OCBC Bank has committed to having a team deployed at the centre by June. And UOB is discussing with the ASC on having staff stationed there.

In a ministerial statement delivered in Parliament in February, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Mr Desmond Tan, said the ASC and the Monetary Authority of Singapore were working with banks to have their staff co-located inside the centre.

He said recovering money lost in scams was very difficult, and that past cases of success involved close partnerships such as by having a bank staff member inside the centre for real-time coordination and intervention.

The centre has partnered more than 60 stakeholders, including banks, telcos and e-commerce platforms since 2020.

A UOB spokesman said it had been providing full support to the centre over the past three years.

The spokesman said its existing partnership with the ASC allowed it to recover $6.69 million from a business e-mail impersonation scam in 2020, the highest sum recovered from a scam that year.

Mr Francisco Celio, head of group corporate security at OCBC Bank, said: "We are enhancing our support to hasten funds tracing and recovery. We will continue to work closely with police and the industry to combat scams."

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