SAS Innovate: New era of scams requires novel solutions

AI is making online scams more convincing than ever, forcing banks, governments and technology companies to collaborate if they are to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated fraudsters.

This is a problem that no single organisation can solve alone, with greater information sharing now critical to protecting consumers.

Those were the prevailing sentiments of Duncan Robertson, CEO at GetVerified, who sat down with Matthew Knight, Head of Fraud and Financial Crime Solutions ANZ at SAS, for a candid discussion on the scam landscape in 2026 during last week's SAS Innovate on Tour event in Sydney.

GetVerified is a New Zealand-based anti-scam and financial fraud business that helps prevent companies and individuals from falling into increasingly elaborate scams and fraudulent payments.

Robertson's comments come as Australia strengthens its own scam prevention framework, placing greater obligations on banks, telecommunications providers and digital platforms to detect and prevent fraud in the age of AI-based cyberattacks and much more sophisticated scams.

Australians lost an estimated A$2.18 billion to scams last year, and financial institutions globally report spending more than US$206 billion annually on financial crime compliance. 

Robertson explained that AI-generated identity fraud is also contributing to rising losses as criminals adopt new techniques.

New Zealand's banking sector recognised the growing threat in 2023 and moved quickly to establish a coordinated anti-scam ecosystem rather than relying on individual institutions to tackle fraud independently.

A key initiative was the rollout of Confirmation of Payee, a verification service that checks whether a payment recipient's name matches the intended bank account before money is transferred.

A similar feature has been implemented across some Australian banks.

"The focus was to get something live as quickly as possible," Robertson said.

Instead of waiting for a perfect solution, banks prioritised deploying a scalable foundation that could be expanded over time.

The initiative has already begun changing customer behaviour. According to GetVerified, 80 per cent of people who receive a name mismatch warning stop and reconsider a payment before proceeding, showing the technology is helping interrupt scams before money is lost.

Beyond technology, however, Robertson explained that the greatest challenge lies in enabling organisations to share information while maintaining privacy and regulatory compliance.

Banks had to work through legal agreements, privacy requirements, liability concerns and governance frameworks before data-sharing could occur safely.

"Sometimes these privacy concerns become an excuse not to do things," he said.

Strong executive leadership also proved essential to the project's success.

Robertson said Australia's new Scam Prevention Framework could deliver significant benefits by requiring multiple industries - not just banks - to participate in coordinated fraud prevention.

But he warned that bringing together banks, telecommunications providers, digital platforms and government agencies into a real-time intelligence-sharing network would present substantial governance and data-sharing challenges.

New Zealand's next priority is expanding data sharing beyond banks to include telcos and digital platforms, allowing trusted intelligence to move more quickly across sectors and disrupt scams before victims transfer funds.

Cross-border collaboration is also emerging as a longer-term goal.

Australia and New Zealand are already sharing knowledge through industry groups, and both countries are ultimately aiming to become less attractive targets for international fraud syndicates.

While legal and privacy barriers remain, the technology already exists to share scam intelligence internationally.

"If you identify a dodgy account in Australia, or a dodgy account in New Zealand, why couldn't that information be shared?" Robertson said.

As AI enables fraudsters to create increasingly realistic fake investment websites, convincing impersonations and targeted attacks, relying on consumer awareness, whose tech savviness varies across a significant spectrum, will no longer be enough.

"We can't just tell consumers to be smarter," Robertson said. "It's getting more targeted, more sophisticated and much faster."

Instead, governments, financial institutions and technology providers must build systems that identify suspicious activity earlier and prevent scams before victims lose their money, particularly once funds move offshore, when recovery becomes significantly more difficult.

Medibank lump-sum payments yielding positive results

Also speaking at SAS Innovate in Sydney, Product Innovation Lead at Medibank, Alicia Faour, and Jordan Mowlai, Senior Software Engineer at Medibank joined Ric Howe, Head of Financial Services Growth at SAS to discuss the success of new Medibank products.

The executives described how the Medibank Recover Boost and ahm Cash Boost products, which address financial pressures on customers that fall outside Australia's private health insurance framework, had already yielded results for customers just months after launch.

These products provide customers with a lump sum payment of $10,000 at the time they are needed most.

"We really set out to think about a unique way in which we can help support our members during life's challenging moments," Faour said.

While private health insurance can cover many medical expenses, legislation limits what insurers can pay for, leaving members to absorb a range of indirect costs during recovery.

The cash payment is designed to help cover expenses such as hospital parking, transport to rehabilitation appointments, childcare or other day-to-day costs that arise during a major health event.

Behind the product is a real-time eligibility engine built using SAS Intelligent Decisioning, enabling Medibank to deliver consistent eligibility assessments across its Medibank and ahm brands despite the businesses operating on different technology platforms.

Mowlai said the company needed a single system capable of applying the same business rules regardless of which brand or purchasing channel members used.

"We needed a unified way to perform these eligibility checks," he said.

The platform leverages APIs that perform eligibility and policy checks in real-time while providing governance and visibility over decision-making.

Instead of relying on LLMs, Howe said the project focused on deterministic decision-making, where outcomes must be consistent and explainable every time.

The technology architecture also delivered substantial operational savings.

Medibank deployed SAS Container Runtime with AWS Fargate, allowing the eligibility service to automatically scale with demand.

Since launching for Medibank members in February and ahm members recently, customer uptake has exceeded expectations.

"We've had successful claims start to be paid, so we're getting feedback from our members as they're going through that claims process," Faour said.

The product has also received industry recognition, winning the WeMoney Award for Best Bundled Health Insurance and Life Insurance Product, while the project team also received an internal Medibank award.