THE Senate today approved on third and final reading a proposed measure that seeks to provide protection for financial consumers such as bank depositors and those with online financial transactions from cybercrimes.
The proposed Financial Consumer Protection Act or Senate Bill Number 2488 was certified by President Rodrigo Duterte as urgent.
Senator Grace Poe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banks and also the bill’s sponsor, said that the bill seeks to assure that the public’s hard-earned money won’t disappear because of cybercrimes like the hacking of bank accounts, and the swift resolution of complaints against it.
Poe pointed to the report of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) that from 2020 up to 2021, they have already received up to 42,456 complaints from financial consumers, amounting to an estimated P540 million the consolidated amount of money that are the subject of complaints.
Majority of the complaints are related to account takeover or identity theft; followed by phishing and social engineering scheme, and card-not-present fraud, or credit cards that were used for transactions even if the card is in the possession of the cardholder.
Under the proposed measure, the government’s financial regulators, or the BSP, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Insurance Commission and the Cooperative Development Authority will be given adjudicatory powers to resolve financial consumers’ complaints.
Financial institutions can be ordered to immediately reimburse victims of financial fraud or cybercrime and they can be the ones to file appropriate charges in court on behalf of the victims.
The financial service providers will also be ordered to install cyber-security mechanisms.
For consumers, the BSP and other aforementioned agencies can also prohibit the collection of unreasonable fees or charges for financial transactions.