CBA and Telstra to detect in-progress phone-based scams

The Commonwealth Bank and Telstra are set to pilot a new service that promises to recognise consumers being scammed out of large amounts of money in real-time.

Called 'scam indicator', it is currently in proof-of-concept with a pilot set to commence within months.

Scam Indicator is designed to identify high-risk scam situations instantaneously.

It matches two pieces of data: an attempt by a customer to transfer a large amount of money, coinciding with them also being on the phone, which could be indicative of a scam call in-progress.

"The tool is designed to detect certain high-risk scam situations in real time using a Telstra API that CBA will call on as part of its scam detection processes," the two organisations said.

"This enables CBA to check if a customer is on a phone call – the prime indicator that a scam is occurring. This allows CBA the opportunity to try to contact the customer or put in additional checks.

"To protect the privacy of both parties, CBA is only able to access specific data points relating to scam prevention through the API, and does not have access to any other underlying customer data."

Once the pilot is complete, the 'scam ]indicator' is expected to be made available  to joint CBA and Telstra customers later this year.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn said the bank has been working with Telstra to produce a machine-learning scams detection model, “the first in a number of exciting initiatives from this partnership.”

“We acknowledge that there is more to do given the rising volume and fast changing nature of scams," Comyn said.

"We’re committed to playing our part to address this national priority alongside leading businesses, government, and the broader community."

The 'scam indicator' builds on Telstra’s ‘cleaner pipes’ strategy, which so far has blocked 230 million SMS messages and stopped an average of 10 million scam or potentially unwanted calls every month.

For CBA, the pilot comes not long after another initiative by the bank recently called ‘NameCheck’,  which prompts customers if payment details do not match known account numbers.

The bank has also recently revealed a new in-app caller verification function ‘CallerCheck’, which enables CBA staff to send a notification to the customer's banking app to verify they are speaking to a genuine customer representative.

CBA predicted up to $20 million of financial losses could be prevented using the real-time detection capability.