Anti-scam initiatives are making strides in the community's fight against financial crime according to the latest 'Targeting Scams' report from the Government's National Anti-Scam Centre, which revealed a 13.1 per cent decline in reported scam losses to $2.74 billion in 2023.

Last year Australians made over 601,000 scam reports to Scamwatch, Report Cyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE and ASIC in 2023, an 18.5 per cent increase on 2022.

According to the report, investment scams caused the most financial harm ($1.3 billion), followed by remote access scams ($256 million) and romance scams ($201.1 million).

ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe states that coordinated scam prevention, detection and disruption initiatives have helped reduce overall financial losses. People over the age of 65 were the only age group to experience an increase in reported losses, with a 13.3 per cent increase in 2023 to $120 million.

“We are optimistic that our combined efforts will continue to reduce scam losses. We will continue this important work because losses remain too high and behind the numbers are real people who have lost money, often every last cent, to scams," said Lowe.

The report also shows emerging scam trends, including increases in reports of financial losses to phishing scams, payment redirection scams and job scams. Text messages were the most reported contact method with 109,621 reports (37.3 per cent increase from 2022), but scam calls resulted in the highest reported losses at $116 million.

Losses to job scams rose by 151.2 per cent to just over $24.3 million. People from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities were disproportionately impacted by job scams.

Lowe underlined the ACCC's commitment to ensuring there are no weak links for scammers to exploit. "A Scams Code Framework with strong, mandatory and enforceable obligations on banks, telcos and digital platforms will be central to this,” she said. “Scammers are financial criminals who use sophisticated technology and psychology to rob Australians of their money and personal information.”

The National Anti-Scam Centre plans to continue investing in technology-based solutions and partnering with other organisations to tackle the most harmful scams.

“While the National Anti-Scam Centre has made a positive impact since it was established on 1 July 2023, there is much more work to do. Over the next two years we will continue to invest in technology-based solutions that will centralise intelligence and distribute information to those who can act on it – such as banks to freeze accounts, telcos to block calls or SMSs and digital platforms to take down websites or accounts," said Lowe.