On June 16, 2026, the OECD released a report called Protecting Consumers from Financial Scams and Frauds.
A number of key officials launched this report by highlighting important initiatives they are working on in their respective countries to detect and prevent consumer fraud.
For example, Dr. Manon Bombardier, the Deputy Commissioner of Canada’s Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, placed emphasis and importance on the development of a first-time National Ant-Fraud Strategy which commenced in earnest in April with submissions welcomed by Finance Canada on 50 questions outlined in a consultation paper.
She said Canada is taking a whole-of-government and multi-sector approach with a federal budget commitment to set up a Financial Crimes Agency. Moreover, the deputy commissioner also noted that her agency will be responsible for overseeing a new Code of Conduct on Economic Abuse. It is recognized as a form of potential fraud, so expectations will be placed on “financial institutions to detect, prevent, and mitigate and respond to economic abuse.” A key takeaway from her was establishing a baseline of protections or consumer safeguards which are clear and consistent.
Australia’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the OECD, Stephen Jones, really set the tone for international collaboration and achieving success confronting this global consumer fraud scourge by providing a good synopsis of what his country is doing. Based on his comments, you can confidently say Australia is leading by example.
He explained as one who has worked in the financial services field for many years how the old bricks and mortar models of distribution have been replaced by remote-servicing, tele contact centers, web-enabled technology and a global marketplace with real-time payments.
Here are more insightful and cogent remarks from Australia’s Stephen Jones
The benefit is that these products and services and these payments are no longer bound by geography. These two forces have enabled financial crimes and scams to absolutely explode. So, the upside is speed, convenience, access to goods and services from anywhere at any time. The downside is whereas we’re able to move money faster, we’re able to lose money a lot faster as well. And in my own country …we were seeing scam losses double every year. They were well on their way to being $6 billion a year.
If we do not get on top of it, the consumer harm is going to multiply and multiply every year. And behind every dollar that is lost is not just the financial loss but there is a human tragedy, a life that is broken and someone that was shamed because they’ve fallen into the trap of a criminal scammer. They will in many instances never recover. We should care about that in and of itself. But alongside the consumer harm rests the very threat of modern commerce. …real-time payments, international marketplaces, remote access arrangements, are at threat.
If people do not trust the rails of modern commerce (e.g., customer call centers), they will stop using them. And we will have to revert or convert business technologies to far more expensive, far less efficient, and far more costly mechanisms that were part of business several decades ago.
So, whether you care about this because you’re motivated by ensuring we have effective and efficient systems of commerce, and banking, and payments, or whether you care about it because you care about the consumer harm that is visited by these multinational scam operations, then we need to be motivated to act. And because they all are operating beyond the boundaries of any one country, we need to act together.
Mr. Jones paused at this time to reflect and speak to the OECD report on protecting consumers from scams and frauds. He said it is an “important contribution to what we need to do” and talked about the survey of G20 plus countries, with the collaboration of national and global financial regulators. The report provides evidence-based information on what is working and underway.
The work on taxonomy that everyone can understand, and information sharing, was viewed as critical within countries, jurisdictions and business to business so that action can be taken in real time to counter the losses which are occurring.
This needs to be done across countries as well with a common language and way to do it – hence the taxonomy and classification of different types of scams and fraud will be invaluable to enhance and build effective communication throughout the global financial eco-system.
The taxonomy classification proposed in this OECD report with ten key dimensions of scams and fraud targeting consumers may well be one to consider, especially for countries who have not embarked on setting one up as others have done already. Jones concluded his remarks with some very significant steps Australia has taken in recent years, so the insidious and never-ending cycle of year-over-year increased consumer fraud is being addressed and even reduced.
The scam prevention framework that we put into place in Australia legislated a whole of economy approach, information sharing, businesses taking responsibility for the conduct that was occurring on their platforms. Putting in place strong new obligations, codes of practice which have the force of law. Giving compensation rights to individuals when businesses don’t do the right thing.
Establishing a national anti-scam center as the nerve center and coordinator for activity across the economy and across the country. Giving our corporate regulator the ability to take down investment scam websites which are the generator of the majority of scam losses in Australia. All of it is absolutely critical. One of those things in and of itself won’t work. We need to do all of it and we need to collaborate internationally.
I want to finish on the good news because I talked at the introduction about Australia being a country where scam losses were doubling every year. As a result of the measures that we have put in place, we have seen between 2023 and 2025, sustained drop in scam losses. They have dropped over 20% in that period. That is good news in an environment where most countries where we are seeing scam losses go up and up and up.
So, it’s a story of hope that if we do the right things, that we learn from best practices internationally, if we take up examples that have been advocated in this important report and advocate for international cooperation within this area, we have hope that across all of the countries of the OECD and beyond, we’ll be able to tell a similar story
