With artificial intelligence supercharging scams, the American Bankers Association is relaunching its largest consumer-facing campaigns to educate the public on how to protect themselves and the role banks play in fighting fraud, ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols announced today during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
The #BanksNeverAskThat campaign uses humor to teach consumers about common scam red flags and provide guidance on how to respond to suspicious communications. The #PracticeSafeChecks campaign educates consumers and small businesses about check fraud and encourages safer check-use practices.
More than 2,500 banks have participated in #BanksNeverAskThat and #PracticeSafeChecks since the campaigns originally launched in October 2020. New this year is a focus on AI-powered scams, urging bankers and consumers to become “Scam Slayers” by taking action to protect themselves or others.
Protecting consumers “is a huge priority for the U.S. banking sector,” Nichols told Squawk Box. He also stressed the need for a multi-stakeholder approach where other actors in the fraud pipeline – such as social media platforms and telecommunications companies – do their part to prevent scams from reaching consumers.
“There are other companies in the U.S. economy that we think have an important role to play here,” Nichols said. “We’re reaching out and meeting with those companies on a weekly basis to come up with a whole fraud ecosystem approach. And we need a whole-of-government approach as well.”
