Surface Ripples

Have Scam Callers Created More Security Headaches for Banks?

At times banks or your credit card company needs to call to check information, usually if you’ve initiated a transaction that they think may be “suspicious”.

This arises from their fear that an unauthorised party may have obtained your security credentials and be using them.

Up till now, we’ve been happy to accept that the person on the other end of the phone claiming to be calling from Bank X or credit card company Y is indeed calling from that institution.

My question: how do we actually know this?  The banks have several security questions that they can ask genuine customers to verify the customer's bona fides, but customers have nothing with which to verify that the caller claiming to be calling from their bank/credit card company initiates the call is indeed calling from that institution.

I’ve actually brought conversations to a quick halt when asking the caller, “How do I know you’re calling from (name of institution)?”

The short answer is, they can’t convince you and this is my point.  There are so many potential scammers out there that people receiving genuine calls from their bank or card company may well be suspicious.

To get round this, we get emails from the institutions saying that they'll never ask us for our security code or other “personally identifiable data” but if we’re to be honest, there should be a system that works just as well on the customer’s side as on the institution’s for verifying caller identities.

Some have now started to get around this by using a smart phone app or system.  As long as the customer is within range of Wi-Fi or is on 4G Internet, then things should still work.  If they aren’t, there’s a problem.

Thanks to scammers, we're facing more fraud than ever and customers are rightly becoming more suspicious even where genuine calls are concerned.

I don’t see any easy way around this other than to continue examining how smart phone apps can be leveraged to reduce potential problems.

Thanks to scammers, the “direct call” from the bank will, I suspect, become a thing of the past.

I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. 

Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling

posted by William Martin @ 14:40