Unveiling of Shared Responsibility Framework for Phishing Scams

16 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Prime Minister (a) when will the Shared Responsibility Framework for phishing scams be released; (b) what is the take-up rate of the Money Lock feature offered by our local banks, broken down by ages of bank customers; and (c) whether the MAS will make it mandatory for all banking institutions to participate in this initiative in the near future.

The Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth and Trade and Industry (Mr Alvin Tan) (for the Prime Minister): Sir, the Government will take into account suggestions and feedback received from the public consultation on the Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF) that closed on 20 December 2023. We aim to publish our response to the consultation and implement the SRF later this year.

For Money Lock, Money Lock gives customers added protection against digital scams by blocking online access to a portion of their funds. Since the three local banks launched Money Lock in November, more than 78,000 Money Lock accounts have been set up, with over S$6.6 billion of savings set aside in March 2024. Among customers who have used Money Lock, those aged 50 and above make up 44%, those between 30 and 50 years old comprise 41%, and those under 30 years of age form 15%. Local banks will continue to raise awareness and encourage adoption amongst their customer base across all demographic segments.

Other major retail banks will introduce Money Lock by mid-2024 and the vast majority of retail depositors will have the Money Lock option available to them. Hence, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has no plans to make Money Lock mandatory for all banking institutions.

Mr Speaker: Mr Choo.

Mr Desmond Choo (Tampines): Mr Speaker, I thank Minister of State Alvin Tan for his response. I have two supplementary questions. The first one is on the consultation. Clearly, MAS has done a very wide consultation. I would like to ask what has been the approaches taken by other jurisdictions with regard to this issue? What has worked and what will be incorporated for Singapore?

The second one would be on Money Lock. When I spoke to many of my residents, they heard about this from me and they said it is a great thing. But this is the first time they are hearing it. So, how can we expand the awareness amongst the people who need it most which are likely to be the seniors, who might not be very Internet or digitally savvy?

Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, I thank the Member for his questions. The second question is that we are enhancing, MAS together with the banks, to increase awareness and encourage adoption of Money Lock across not just the local banks but, as I said earlier on, by mid-2024 other banks will also incorporate Money Lock. So, there is a concerted effort to raise awareness and to increase adoption of Money Lock.

On the SRF consultation ended on 20 December, we received a number of very good consultation responses. I would like to highlight a couple of interesting points.

The first is that the consultation responses that we received were very thoughtful. Some had asked whether we could expand the SRF to include more scam variants, more entities – that is entirely reasonable and we talked about that in this House.

But there is also an interesting number of responses by members of public who submitted the consultation responses that talked about how do you factor consumers' responsibility and the contributing role in determining the payouts. And in this case, how do you encourage consumer responsibility and also to reduce moral hazards? I think this is a very important point that responsibilities must be shared and I think that is the essence of the SRF.

At the same time, we are studying about how other jurisdictions are deploying their different approaches to scams, including different shared responsibilities. The United Kingdom (UK) is one, Australia is one. If you look at the UK's contingent reimbursement model, the number of Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud cases had increased by 34% since they implemented the CRM compared to the same period in 2022.

So, I raised this just to share that different approaches have to fit different jurisdictions and what we are doing is taking a very concerted, careful study approach so that we do not have or come into unintended consequences that will exacerbate moral hazard, but bearing in mind that we want to protect consumers in the process as well.

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan Wu Meng.

Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong): Mr Speaker, I like to thank Minister of State for his answer. Can Minister of State reassure the House that in the development of the SRF, there will also be consideration to what has been debated in Parliament as well as suggestions that have been raised? That is my first question, because a number of Members have raised suggestions over the past few years.

The second question to Minister of State is will the framework also adopt a forward-looking horizon scan of emerging scam modalities? And I say this because two years ago, in this House, I and some others talked about the risk of deepfake scams coming through and today we see around the world the rise of AI voice cloning and deepfake attacks on public figures, replicating public figures and even the cloning of people's voices which is an emerging technology.

Will the SRF consider all this because moral hazard sometimes is not a step off a cliff that people fall off or get cut off by? It can sometimes also exist in a continuum of forced, or unforced errors based on circumstances and what public understanding is of the scams out there.

Mr Alvin Tan: Sir, I would like to assure Dr Tan Wu Meng that these, in fact, are the types of feedback and suggestions, including by the Member himself and Mr Desmond Choo and other Members of this House to look at the rapidly evolving nature of scam typologies.

We focus the SRF on phishing, but we are well aware that malware scams have also contributed to the number of scams that Singaporeans have encountered. And so, we will factor all of these in and that is why the consultation had also, as I mentioned earlier on, looked at suggestions on whether we could expand the kind of scam variants or the entities in the SRF. But, at the same time, as we combat this rapidly evolving scam nature and different typologies, we need to take a suite of approaches towards combating this.

The SRF is one way in which we will ascribe responsibility using a waterfall approach. And I said earlier on that we are exploring other jurisdictions' different approaches. Not every jurisdiction's approach will fit and we need to study that carefully.

But at the same time, to Member Desmond Choo's point, Money Lock is another feature that we are trying to encourage people to adopt to safeguard a portion of your funds. We also have a very strong consolidated public education and public awareness campaign that is one of the best inoculations against scams. Also, at your device level, some of the banks have ensured that there is no side-loading of apps.

The key thing here is for all of us to take an upstream approach, be aware of scams, look out for scams and also to encourage your friends, family members to be very much wary of this.

So, thank you for Members' contributions to this very important topic. We will factor all of these into consideration when we roll out SRF which is a "live" document, and also, put in a significant amount of effort to raise awareness and to prevent scams from happening.

1.30 pm

Mr Speaker: Order. End of Question Time. The Clerk will now proceed to read the Orders of the day.

[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), provided that Members had not asked for questions standing in their names to be postponed to a later Sitting day or withdrawn, written answers to questions not reached by the end of Question Time are reproduced in the Appendix.]