The moves are a response to what the government says is an explosion in consumer losses due to fraud, including increasingly sophisticated online scams that sometimes deploy artificial intelligence tools. — Pixabay
Canada is launching a new financial crimes agency and making changes to banking laws to clamp down on online fraud and other scams.
The government will amend the Bank Act to add new requirements for lenders to detect and prevent fraud. Among those changes, banks will have to obtain the "express consent” of customers before enabling certain money-transfer functions on bank accounts.
Bank customers will also be allowed to adjust transaction limits on their accounts by themselves, to protect their accounts from being drained by scam artists who get their information. The measures were announced Monday by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
The moves are a response to what the government says is an explosion in consumer losses due to fraud, including increasingly sophisticated online scams that sometimes deploy artificial intelligence tools. Canadians had C$643mil (RM1.93bil) stolen last year due to fraud, according to figures from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. But that’s likely only 5% to 10% of the actual amount lost, the CAFC says, given that many victims are too embarrassed to report schemes.
The government’s plan is to open the new financial crimes agency in the first half of 2026. It would bring together experts "to investigate crimes such as money laundering, and online fraud and financial scams, and recover criminals’ illicit proceeds,” according to a statement.
More details are to be laid out in Champagne’s budget, which will be released Nov 4. – Bloomberg
