Trudie Broekmann, a consumer attorney at Trudie Broekmann Attorneys, published an open letter to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, the South African Reserve Bank, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Banking Association of South Africa and the Payments Association of South Africa that criticised the way banks handled customers who experienced fraud on their accounts.
ALLEGATIONS AGAINST BANKS
In the open letter, the firm said banks frequently blamed affected consumers, alleging negligence, and gave them little or no explanation of how their systems had been infiltrated. She addressed her concerns to both government and regulatory authorities, calling for a mandatory reimbursement policy for victims of banking fraud, modelled on the UK's authorised push payment (APP) scam rules, under which, the letter said, the sending and receiving banks are jointly liable to reimburse victims unless the victim was grossly negligent.
The letter said the firm, which specialises in consumer law, had recently been inundated with complaints from consumers who had fallen victim to cybercrime. It also said banks cited the Protection of Personal Information Act to refuse to disclose information, such as recipients' account details, that victims needed to trace and recover stolen funds.
The letter said such a policy could be introduced through the collective efforts of key role players in the payment system, including the Finance Ministry, the Payments Association of South Africa, the Banking Association of South Africa and the South African Reserve Bank.
UK MODEL
The letter also pointed to the UK Payment Systems Regulator's publication of reimbursement data for the country's 14 largest banking groups as a model for holding banks accountable.