Dear DBS Bank,
I am writing with regard to the fraudulent ATM withdrawals as experienced by some 400 of your DBS/POSB accounts holders.
Between 4-5 Jan, there were postings circulating in Facebook telling us to go check our accounts as some people have found unauthorised withdrawals from their accounts. I usually dismissed such messages with much thought.
But on Jan 6, DBS Bank officially acknowledged the occurrence of such incidents and state that DBS Bank is prepared to make good any money illegally withdrawn from the accounts. The 400 affected customers who lost about $500,000 through unauthorised withdrawals were fully compensated within 24 hours of the incident. My sincere congratulations to this speedy decision and action that could have prevented a massive hysteria leading to a run on the bank. I guess when the decision was made to reimburse any losses suffered, the magnitude of damage may be seen to be limited.
On Jan 11, Piyush Gupta (DBS Bank's CEO) came forward to apologise officially for the inconvenience and anxiety caused. I will congratulate DBS Bank again for successfully managing the post-incident activities with aplomb. But I hope this apology from the top dog, does not signify the winding down and closure of an "unfortunate inconvenience".
I have a couple of concerns for your consideration.
Firstly, does DBS Bank's responsibility to compensate affected account holders limited at the amount illegally withdrawn? I heard, over the radio, of this nurse, in her early twenties, in a hysteria state, as she expressed her emotional stress experienced when she realised that her hard earned money could just disappeared from her account!! We all placed our hard earned money with one bank or another, in good faith. In good faith that a service provider/bank who acts as a custodian of our assets, has put in place sufficient and reasonable level of security measures to protect our assets. This thus lead me to ask the next question - Has DBS Bank put in place sufficient and reasonable level of security measures to prevent occurrence of such illegal withdrawals?
My third question - What has exactly happened?
On Jan 11, Piyush Gupta reassured us that there was no internal involvement in the incident. While you have confirmed no internal fooling around, I am still pretty hazy as to how a few individuals working from outside the bank applying a relatively low tech/little brain technique of copying data and duplicating cards in a hotel room in Geylang could outwit DBS Bank to the tune of $1million?
Thank you and awaiting your response.
