Every other day, we hear about Australians scammed out of thousands of dollars by someone claiming to be a salesperson at Amazon, or even your mum or dad. In fact, Australians lost $53 million in just two months to sophisticated fraudsters this year.

In Australia, victims of such scams have little legal recourse to recover losses. As such, we are calling on major Australian banks to implement the Contingent Reimbursement Model Code (CRM Code). Commonwealth Bank, NAB, ANZ, Westpac - introduce CRM to help reimburse victims of fraud.

The impact of a scam on a person can be devastating and life-altering. Nobody deserves to go through that without systematic support from their banks. Banks must shoulder some of the responsibility to have stronger safeguard mechanisms in place.

The CRM Code is a voluntary code of conduct designed to protect consumers from APP scams. It provides for reimbursement of losses where customers have been the victims of APP scams and have met certain eligibility criteria. This means that if Australians have done their due in raising concerns and notifying the banks, they should become eligible to be reimbursed.

In the long run, this can help banks take robust measures that actually protect customers from scams and reduce overall incidence of scam. Scammers aren’t slowing down, and their technology is only become more sophisticated day by day.

The banking industry must adopt an industry-wide code to preventing and detecting scams. Please sign and share the petition to help protect Australians from dodgy scammers, and make our banks more accountable.