Up to 5M Filipinos claim to be identity theft victims

About 4.5 percent of adult Filipinos or 5 million individuals claimed to have been victimized by identity theft, according to a survey by data analytics firm Fico, which could lead to them suffering financial losses.

In addition, 6 percent or around 6.7 million Filipinos believe their identity was used to open a financial account fraudulently, which Fico said showed rising awareness of such scams.

The respondents, as such, understood that banks conduct more frequent fraud checks to safeguard them against identity theft, account takeover and card fraud.

One of the emerging scams identified by the report was the authorized push payment (APP) fraud whereby cyberhackers trick users into sending them money.

“APP fraud is becoming a bigger problem in the Philippines as we see a boom in the use of real-time payments,” said CK Leo, Fico lead for fraud, security and financial crime in the Asia-Pacific.

“Fraudsters are attracted to these scams as the victims bypass checks by authorizing the payments themselves, with the funds clearing instantly and laundered through a maze of accounts,” Leo added.

Scams more prevalent

With the scams getting more prevalent, Fico’s study revealed that two in five Filipino consumers cited fraud and scam protection as top priority when opening new financial accounts.

The report noted this was in line with the consumers’ increasing preference to do banking digitally.

“With around 57 million banking customers in the Philippines, if 40 percent of consumers are filtering financial providers to find those with the strongest fraud protection, that’s a market of more than 23 million,” Leo said.

“This is a significant opportunity and shows that good fraud protection can be a bank’s biggest sales asset rather than just an overhead,” the official added.

At the same time, financial institutions were warned about 28 percent of Filipinos reducing or stopping the use of credit cards due to time-consuming identity checks.

Some also gave up opening savings accounts and securing personal loans due to this.