T

he Financial Services Authority (OJK) will soon revise its banking IT systems rules in an attempt to counter the rising trend of digital crime, its official says.

OJK deputy commissioner for banking supervision Irwan Lubis said the rules, which regulates the usage of IT systems in banks, needed several improvements.

Irwan said the revision would include better mitigation of digital crimes and would also aim to speed up the return of money to owners in any cases of banking fraud.

'€œOne of the new articles in the regulation will help accelerate the process of returning funds belonging to the victims of digital crime,'€ Irwan said after a seminar on electronic banking security on Monday.

Irwan said the revision was suggested by lenders as customers who were victims of digital crime often faced a prolonged process in getting their money back.

In the existing investigative procedure, law enforcers order banks to temporarily freeze accounts suspected of receiving transfers of money stolen from other accounts from different banks.

Often times, Irwan said, the freezing of the account would take a long time and, therefore, the money could only be returned to the owner after the criminal perpetrator had been found guilty in a criminal court and the case was settled.

In order to simplify the process while mitigating crime, Irwan said, banks would be allowed to alert each other after one of them suspected that one of its accounts had been used to receive stolen funds.

'€œThere will be an internal policy in which the bank can freeze the account right away after alerting its counterparts. Then, along with OJK'€™s supervisors, the bank can conduct an investigation. Afterwards, the money can be returned to the customer as soon as possible,'€ Irwan said.

Digital crime against banks, such as phising, hacking, fraud and scams, has been rising in the past few years alongside the increase in electronic banking transactions, according to the OJK. OJK data shows that the volume of electronic banking (e-banking) usage nationwide reached Rp 6.44 quadrillion (US$452.5 billion) by the end of last year, an increase from Rp 4.44 quadrillion in 2012.

Despite a rising trend of digital crime attacks on banks, Irwan said that criminal cases only accounted for 0.0057 percent of total e-banking transactions last year.

Bank Mandiri president director Budi Gunadi Sadikin said digital crime had been increasing because of the rising amount of e-banking transactions in his bank.

'€œCurrently, digital crime cases in Bank Mandiri stand at only 0.1 percent of our total e-banking transactions and it is still considered normal in our internal policy. There is no bank able to reduce digital crime cases to zero percent, but we are trying to press down the amount to below 0.1 percent,'€ Budi said.