Crackdown on cybercrime: Central Bank introduces anti-fraud strategy

Barnabás Virág, a deputy governor at the National Bank of Hungary (NBH), detailed measures the central bank is taking to counter online financial fraud at a press conference on Tuesday.

Central bank launches cybercrime prevention plan

Virág said a central system to screen for fraudulent banking transactions would be launched in July. The central bank will instruct banks on immediate measures to combat fraud, while scrutinising lenders’ existing safeguards, he added.

The central bank will initiate anti-fraud legislation that would hold banks responsible for damages resulting from a failure to use strong authentication or scams involving fake bank websites, and it will start a campaign to heighten public awareness of the risk of fraud, he said.

Last year, over 226,000 bank card transactions were affected by fraud, with damages reaching HUF 42bn, he added.

Governor Varga: NBH to support govt stepping up against fraudsters

The central bank will support the government’s actions against financial fraudsters with five measures, Mihály Varga, the governor of the National Bank of Hungary (NBH), said on social media on Monday.

The central bank and financial market regulator will launch a central fraud screening system in July, Varga said. The system will use artificial intelligence to examine money transfers in a fraction of a second before they are completed and send notifications if it detects any suspicious activity.

The NBH will expect banks to be much more active in preventing fraud than they have been in the past. Banks must immediately and fully implement recommendations set out earlier by the NBH to prevent fraud.

The NBH will also perform targeted inspections to determine if banks are taking all the measures expected of them to curb these frauds.

Varga said they will seek to initiate a change in the legal framework and recommend, in accordance with international practices, that banks fully bear damages in all cases where they did not apply appropriate customer authentication. This includes extending banks’ liability to cases where the customer is persuaded – by scammers – to initiate payment on behalf of the bank.

The central bank will also launch an information campaign for bank clients about fraud risks and fraud prevention.

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As we wrote earlier, PM Orbán blames surge in bank fraud on Ukrainian criminals