The self-managed retirement savings of Australians are being increasingly targeted by financial criminals for fraud and money laundering, bank experts warn.
Steven York, the Bank of Queensland's head of group security and business resilience, told a parliamentary inquiry into financial crime that super funds - particularly self-managed funds - were more exposed to financial crime because of the fact that people rarely checked their accounts.
"There is a large opportunity for criminals, and if they get access to that account, it will go unnoticed for a long period of time," he said.
"I think it's a growing area and the criminals would see this as well. They understand people are saving money in these positions."
Mr York said the bank had witnessed a growing trend in fraudsters sending out letters to fund holders, encouraging them to role over their funds into a scam account.
"There are phishing expeditions going on, probably to all super funds," he said.
Australian Bankers Association policy director Paul Stacey said Australia's current anti-money laundering rules did not adequately cover the situation.
"There is significant money going into SMSFs. There is the potential for those investments to be exploited for that reason, for money laundering, rather than fraud," he said.
The Reserve Bank told the inquiry that counterfeiting of bank notes was also slowly edging up, as money-faking techniques became more advanced.
Assistant governor for currency Michele Bullock said that since plastic notes were introduced in Australia most counterfeiting had been "very crude" and used paper notes. More recently, fake bank notes had become more sophisticated.
"We've noticed in the past few years that people are getting better," she said. "People are able to print bank notes now more onto plastic substrates."
Latest figures show the rate of counterfeiting had risen from eight fake notes per million in 2009 to 15 per million in 2013.
The central bank has also detected an increase in the number of $50 and $100 bank notes in circulation in recent years. While the increase in $50 notes could be because these are stocked in ATMs, the rise in $100 notes was harder to explain.
One potential reason for this increase include the low interest rate environment, which provides little incentive to put money in the bank, the RBA's submission said.
Bank representatives rejected any suggestion that popular "tap and go" credit cards had led to an increase in identity theft and financial fraud.
This was despite submissions by state police that banks were not doing enough to counter a rise in the illegal use of the cards.
"PayWave is not a large driver of fraud losses for banks and customers," Australia and New Zealand Banking Group's head of financial crime Guy Boyd said. "We have recorded a low threshold of fraud threats," he said.
However, the bankers also said they were constantly under attack from criminal phishing schemes and identify fraud.
"Over the past five years, every bank has invested heavily in technology monitoring," Mr York said. "But these massive investments quickly become out of date as the criminals can get around the closed doors very quickly."
with Jessica Sier
