KUALA LUMPUR: The National Fraud Portal (NFP) will boost Malaysia's strategy to combat online fraud, said Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan.
He said the platform launched on Tuesday will change the NSRC process, which was previously handled manually and took a lot of time.
He added that a quick response is key to preventing stolen funds from being removed from the financial system, thus increasing the likelihood of recovery.
"Since the pilot stage, the NFP has reduced the time to track fraudulent transactions by 75 per cent, and increased the average monthly amount of frozen funds, or 'earmarked amount', by financial institutions by 28 per cent or RM4 million.
"With the participation of 16 financial institutions, the benefits of this portal are expected to continue to increase, along with continuous improvement and more participation of financial institutions," he said at the NFP launch here today.
NFP was jointly unveiled by Bank Negara Malaysia, Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet) and financial institutions as an integrated platform to strengthen the operational capabilities of the NSRC.
According to Amir Hamzah, the portal is a leading automation platform in the region, providing secure access to key databases to support fraud prevention, as well as giving NSRC members a dynamic ability to detect and prevent fraudulent activity.
It will integrate financial transaction data from various sources to automatically detect suspicious transactions and facilitate verification by the institutions involved.
He added that the portal's automation speeds up actions, reduces fraud detection time, and prevents further losses.
Bank Negara governor Datuk Seri Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour said the NSRC had opened more than 12,000 investigation papers and frozen a total of RM72 million from accounts identified through enforcement orders issued by the police as of June 2024.
Acknowledging the technology exploitation by cyber criminals, he said the NFP is developed to harness the power of technology and data analysis in an effort to combat financial fraud.
"Through the NFP, NSRC operations are now equipped with end-to-end automation capabilities to manage fraud reports, verify and track stolen funds, and enable sharing of early warnings among financial institutions so that quick responses can be taken.
"The NFP that utilises the PayNet shared infrastructure provides credible payment data for NSRC operations to facilitate the tracking and analysis of funds," he added.
Abdul Rasheed said the efforts to combat financial fraud adopt three key themes which are optimising technology, nurturing collaboration dan empowering consumers.
The NFP, he added, is another important achievement in the country's efforts to combat financial fraud, as well as one of the various measures that have been taken to maintain the people's confidence in the digital financial system in Malaysia.