You’ve probably heard a story like this before. When ‘Ms Tan’ received a late-night alert from her “bank,” she thought nothing of it. A quick click, a one-time password, and a few minutes later, her savings vanished. Beyond the shock of losing money comes a second blow: discovering how little can be done after it’s gone.
The harsh reality is that you can lose your life savings in thirty seconds, and the odds of getting it all back are slim — and no one may technically be at fault.
That’s precisely the kind of heartbreak that lands on the Financial Industry Dispute Resolution Centre (FIDReC)’s desk these days. It’s a reality that the FIDReC has been trying to explain as it quietly becomes Singapore’s front line for digital-age disputes. As the institution marks its 20th year, it warns that digital scams are rewriting the rules of financial redress.
For years, FIDReC handled what you might call traditional finance pain: rejected insurance claims, investment losses, fine print gone wrong. These days, it’s handling more and more scams that exploit both people and the systems built to protect them — phishing links, spoofed apps, e-wallets drained overnight.
The laws can’t move as fast as the scams
Many scams today are designed to exploit the fact that you authorised the transaction by providing the OTP — albeit through deception. Which means the bank didn’t mishandle your money; you technically sent it to the wrong person.
As such, Singapore built the Shared Responsibility Framework (SRF), a rulebook for no-fault disasters. It advises banks and consumers on the spread of responsibility in the event of scams. But even that has limits, as the SRF only covers phishing through fake websites.
In other words, if your card was linked to a scammer’s wallet, or you were tricked over the phone, you’re outside its scope. And that ‘gap’ has become costly.
And the numbers are getting ugly
Given how deceptively innocuous these things are, the numbers are nothing short of alarming. In 2024 alone, Singapore recorded 51,501 scam cases — a 10.6 per cent increase from the previous year — with SGD 1.1 billion in reported losses. After taking recovery into account, the net loss was closer to SGD 930 million.
The median loss per case actually fell to about SGD 1,389, indicating that the surge was driven by a few extreme cases. However, it’s also notable that just 3.3 per cent of scams accounted for over 70 per cent of total losses. The elderly remain the most financially vulnerable, but younger victims make up the majority of cases.
The Singapore Police Force reports that, in the first half of 2025 alone, victims lost SGD 456 million across 20,000 cases. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency-related scams now account for nearly a quarter of all losses.
FIDReC’s own dealings show that scam-related disputes have increased by 200 per cent since 2021, reaching a record 2,646 cases in FY 2024/25 — the highest in its 20-year history.
And unlike the 2008 financial crisis spike, this isn’t a one-off surge. It’s now the new normal.
When advanced tech meets uneven literacy
You’d be surprised to know that Singapore’s scam problem isn’t happening in spite of its digital strengths — it’s happening because of them.
The country now ranks first in the world for digital competitiveness, according to the 2024 IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, ahead of Switzerland, Denmark, and the United States. That top spot reflects how deeply Singapore’s economy, governance, and daily life are wired for digital efficiency.
However, when we factor in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC 2023), the picture becomes more complicated. While Singapore’s adults perform above average in numeracy (274 points), their literacy proficiency averages 255 points — below the OECD mean, with nearly one in three adults scoring at Level 1 or below in literacy and digital problem-solving.
This mismatch — between world-class systems and mixed human resilience — is not unique to us. From Seoul to Stockholm, it’s the same pattern now visible across many advanced economies: when efficiency outpaces education, scams fill the gap.
Note: Direct comparisons across countries can be tricky — reporting standards and definitions vary widely. For instance, only about 20 per cent of Swedes and 70 per cent of Australians report scams, and what counts as a ‘scam’ differs from Singapore’s broader police definition.
In South Korea, a hyperconnected society where nearly every citizen owns a smartphone, voice-phishing scams caused 885.6 billion won in damages between January and August 2025 — already surpassing the previous year’s record of 854.5 billion won. Australia, another digital banking pioneer, saw over 601,000 scam reports and A$2.7 billion in losses in 2023, with 3.1 per cent of Australians affected by scams and 9.9 per cent by card fraud in 2023–24 (ACCC; ABS).
Meanwhile, in Japan, special fraud cases resulted in ¥72.21 billion in losses, surpassing the full-year record of 2024 in just seven months of 2025. Online banking fraud alone jumped approximately 73% in the first half of 2025 to ¥4.22 billion. Even Sweden — a cashless leader with one of the world’s highest literacy rates — hasn’t dodged the trend: citizens lost an estimated USD 2.75 billion to scams in 2024, with one in eight Swedes targeted successfully. For them, online fraud cases have nearly doubled — a 93 per cent increase — over the past two years, while total losses reached roughly 0.5 per cent of national GDP, one of the highest proportional impacts worldwide.
In that light, Singapore isn’t an anomaly. However, a study by ScamAdviser found that Singaporean victims lose the most per person globally — around USD 4,000 each.
In contrast, Finland has among the highest adult competencies: in the 2022–23 PIAAC cycle, Finnish adults scored 296 in literacy and 294 in numeracy — well above the OECD averages — and only 12% scored at the lowest literacy level. In 2024, Finnish banks reported €107.2 million in attempted fraud, of which €62.9 million were lost — a fraction of Singapore’s equivalent losses, despite a similar population size.
The takeaway is stark: digital maturity without digital discernment creates a lucrative imbalance. The formula? High access + high trust + uneven literacy = high-value targets. Scammers follow opportunity — and in economies where everything moves instantly, mistakes do too.
And that’s where Singapore now finds itself — a nation engineered for digital perfection, learning that the same speed and trust that powers its systems also magnify their weakest link: the human one.
What the system can (and can’t) do
Singapore has constantly introduced new defences to combat this wave of issues. Police can now freeze scam-linked accounts under temporary restriction orders. From 15 October 2025, banks can hold or reject large transfers that look suspicious — especially when someone attempts to move more than half their balance in a day.
In 2024 alone, the Anti-Scam Command (Singapore’s specialised task force) managed to recover SGD 182 million, reducing net scam loss for the year to about SGD 930 million — progress, but with some ways to go. For every safeguard that is introduced, scammers will find another angle to approach.
Where FIDReC fits in
When the damage is done, FIDReC steps in — not as a judge, but as a referee. On paper, victims often have little recourse because financial institutions, such as banks, have typically already fulfilled their legal obligations (e.g., sending notifications via phone).
“Our work used to be about contracts and fine print,” says FIDReC’s Director of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Kenneth Har. “Now, it’s about behaviour — and how both sides responded when things went wrong.”
FIDReC’s mediators consider reasonableness, not just fault: Did you act promptly? Did the bank act responsibly? Were there fair chances to stop the loss?
In FY 2023/24, about 82 per cent of cases reached some form of settlement through mediation or adjudication. But “settlement” rarely means a full refund — recoveries typically range between 10 and 30 per cent of the loss. Sometimes it’s goodwill; sometimes it’s shared responsibility.
FIDReC can’t perform miracles; it can’t force a bank to pay when liability isn’t clear, chase money that’s already offshore, and it certainly can’t undo a transfer that you authorised. However, it provides recourse when it would be unfair for legitimate victims to bear the entire burden.
At some point, though, the law reaches its limits, and what’s left are our habits.
We’re not stupid — we’ve been conditioned
FIDReC notes that scams are complicated by the instantaneous nature of technology — for example, what constitutes a “reasonable” reaction time when an alert flashes during a meeting or commute, as it is not always possible to respond instantly.
Today’s consumers face ‘notification fatigue’: constant pings blur real warnings into white noise, and fake OTP requests into routine. And one wrong tap is all that it takes.
Eunice Chua, CEO of FIDReC, calls it a behavioural blind spot: “We rely on speed and convenience so much that vigilance becomes the friction.”
There is a real danger in thinking that scams only happen to ‘stupid’ people; it’s more insidious than that, because modern scams prey on you using information overload and complacency.
The hopeful bit and what you can actually do
However, all is not lost — you can report, freeze, dispute, and sometimes recover. You can also take it to FIDReC if your bank or insurer’s response seems unfair. Part of FIDReC’s remit is also to educate consumers by helping them understand the boundaries of responsibility in the digital age, rather than relying solely on “protection” from infrastructure.
Pause before tapping. If something feels urgent, it’s probably bait.
Check every OTP. It tells you what it’s for — read it.
Set low transfer limits and turn on every alert your bank allows.
Report immediately. The earlier you call, the better the odds of freezing funds.
File with FIDReC if you can’t resolve things with your bank.
Stay cynical. The more sophisticated the scam sounds, the more it seeks to earn your trust.
Singapore’s defences — from policing to mediation to education — are getting stronger. But scams will constantly evolve faster. Knowing what can and can’t be done is a necessity in this day and age. Because in a world where criminals move at the speed of a tap, awareness is your last real firewall.
