The bank who is the centre of attention in Singapore, OCBC has said that they will be making full payments to their customers who are scam victims that were affected.
The bank told the media that over 100 victims have received the payouts. Previously, it was reported that at least 30 of the victims has started receiving the payouts
OCBC said that they have been paying victims back the money loss to scammers since earlier this month.
OCBC will be making payment arrangements with all the victims by next week.
The Business Times reported that to date around 470 OCBC users has lost their savings.
This is good news to many who have lost their life savings to scammers.
OCBC bank said on Facebook:
“We strongly condemn this (SMS-shing) scam as it preyed on consumers’ fear and was a highly-coordinated one. We fully understand the concerns and anxiety of our affected customers. We have begun making goodwill payment since 8 January 2022. I sincerely ask our customers to allow us the time to conduct a thorough review and validation before we inform them of the payouts. We seek our customers’ patience and understanding as investigations are complex, and we apologise that our response fell short of our customers’ expectations during their time of distress.”
– OCBC Bank’s Group CEO, Ms Helen Wong
We want to assure everyone that our banking systems and digital banking platforms are safe and secure. Digital banking remains a convenient way to do banking. We do not want this scam to take that away from us, but scams are increasingly sophisticated. Therefore, do stay alert and do your banking only at the Bank’s official websites and on the official mobile apps. Together with the Association of Banks in Singapore and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the industry will review to further strengthen the anti-fraud detection and prevention measures.