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22 Sep 2025, by Amy Sarcevic
One thing that all parties involved in scam prevention can agree on is that nobody is too smart to be scammed. But when it comes to who should be liable for scam losses, opinions are divided.
In the United Kingdom, banks must compensate scam victims under a mandatory reimbursement model, while in Australia customers are less able to recover their losses. As to when they should be compensated, there is a notable lack of consensus.
Creating unity
Suanne Russell, Lead Ombudsman for Small Business and Transactions at the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), said it will soon become clearer under the Scam Prevention Framework (SPF).
Earlier this year, the government announced that it would designate AFCA to run the SPF’s External Dispute Resolution (EDR) scheme, where it will handle scam complaints about telco providers, banks and digital platforms.
“The SPF framework is seeking to coordinate multiple authorities and achieve consistency across the different players in the scam ecosystem. It’s an ambitious task, and something no other country around the world has done before,” Suanne said, ahead of the Credit Law Conference.
“Add to that the fact that scams are evolving at pace, and we are essentially dealing with a moving target. Our challenge will be to cement rules on how they are prevented, disrupted and responded to. It’s a big task and we will be more effective if we work together.”
Addressing grey areas
While each of the sectors will have its own code, none of these have yet been drafted; and it is not clear yet what they will contain.
“Some areas are quite grey but we know it’s important that we have clear codes with clear obligations and consequences.
“We are looking at how the internal dispute resolution will work, how to make it consistent across the sectors, and how to attribute liability between the various parties,” Suanne said.
The circumstances in which a customer gets redress for a scam will also need to be settled.
Suanne said this is complicated given the sophistication of scams and how quickly the landscape continues to change.
“With today’s techniques, there is a scam for everyone,” she said. “We’ve seen high profile executives who work in financial organisations become victims. These are sophisticated operations, executed by a team of criminals, and chances are they have been gathering information about you for some time.
“That potato peeler you bought online in 2022, could be the reason you lost $10,000 today. It’s a long-game that many scammers are happy to play.”
Scammers are also good at finding people in vulnerable situations – and these vulnerabilities cannot always be controlled.
“It’s an appalling situation for anyone to be scammed, and we know that the stress it causes is immense, but the targeting of vulnerable people is even more concerning.
“I would like to see the new codes protecting vulnerable consumers,” Suanne said.
New rules for ‘authorised’ transactions?
As the codes take shape, it is hoped they will address gaps in the current law and current codes.
Of particular concern are the scam victims who ‘authorised’ their fraudulent transaction, and the challenges they face when trying to recover losses.
“Say a consumer intended to pay someone but actually paid a mule account, unknowingly,” Suanne said. “The fact that they put the request in themselves makes it ‘authorised’ and unless the bank did something wrong, it is difficult for them to be compensated.
“Here in Australia and around the world we are seeing growing sentiment that banks can and should do more to protect consumers from scammers when making these types of transactions, and I hope this will be reflected in the code.”
Join the debate
Sharing more thoughts and opening debate on this issue, Suanne will join an expert panel at this year’s Credit Law Conference in October.
Joining her on the panel are Shaq Johnson, Head of Customer Protection at ANZ and Elise Ivory of Denton Partners.
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