THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) unveiled a much-anticipated shared responsibility framework (SRF) for phishing scams last week.

On the face of it, the SRF protects consumers from a potentially ruinous form of fraud. It sets out specific duties for financial institutions (FIs) and telecommunications companies (telcos) to mitigate the risk of consumers falling prey to phishing scams; and assigns all losses from these scams to FIs and telcos that fail to discharge their respective duties.

The FIs stand first in line to bear these losses, as they are custodians of their customers’ deposits. The telcos are second in line, given their secondary role of facilitating the delivery of SMSes associated with online banking transactions.