No employee negligence in scam losses, BML says
Nimal said BML's internet banking security is in line with international standards.
By
Aishath Fareeha Abdulla
The Bank of Maldives (BML) said on Wednesday that money is not lost from customers' accounts due to its employee negligence.
The State Owned Enterprises (SOE) Committee of Parliament held a meeting to clarify the extent to which the findings of the parliamentary report on BML have been implemented. The bank said that even when the authorities investigated cases of fraudulent withdrawals, they were not informed about the involvement of any employees.
"We can assure you that we have not noticed any staff involvement so far," BML Director of Retail, Business and SME Banking Moosa Nimal said.
BML told the committee:
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About 700 scam cases were reported in the second quarter of this year
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Some 1,400 scam cases have been reported so far this year
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39% of the reported scam cases involved impersonating family members by calling on phone or by hacking a family member's Viber and getting them to transfer money
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35% of the cases were filed for online shopping scams; replying to advertisements for selling items and sending money to buy the goods
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20% are foreign exchange transactions in Viber and Telegram groups
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10% of the scam cases reported to the bank this year were compromised internet banking passwords; this also makes 6% of the cases filed in the second quarter
“Even in cases of login compromise, we are very confident that the security of our system will not be compromised,” Nimal said.
He said BML's internet banking security is in line with international standards.
"We are very confident that there is no involvement of any of our staff in any of these incidents. So far, in cases like this based on the information received from the investigating agencies and our internal scrutiny of them," Nimal said.
BML has previously said that fraud and loss of money from customers' accounts is not due to any failure of the bank's system.
