New Visa Award

NEWS RELEASE

New Visa Award to Incentivise Strong Security and Risk Management Practices in Financial Institutions

Inaugural Visa LEADER Awards recognise financial institutions in Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa with outstanding risk management

Auckland, June 25, 2012 – Visa Inc. today launched a new award for financial institutions that recognises, shares and promotes best practices in risk. The program aims to advance the risk management standards across all financial institutions by honouring those that have successfully implemented a secure and reliable infrastructure that counters fraud across all channels. The global payments company lauded the efforts of 20 institutions across Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (APCEMEA) by recognising them with the inaugural annual Visa LEADER Award at Visa’s 2012 APCEMEA Security Summit.

“Societies are increasingly moving from cash to electronic payments because they offer greater security, reliability and convenience than cash. As the payment ecosystem evolves and payments become smarter and better, fraud attacks are increasing in sophistication,” said Tolan Steele, Head of Risk, Visa APCEMEA.

Steele continued: “Visa recognises that combating fraud is not an individual effort, but one that requires collaboration within the whole industry. Financial institutions have been advancing their risk management infrastructure by enhancing their technology, protocols and tools to effectively mitigate emerging threats and trends. Visa clients across APCEMEA have been proactively countering fraud across all channels, and we want to applaud and recognise those that have stood out in their risk management measures, strategies and success rates. We hope this award will encourage others to emulate their success in advancing the security of the industry.”

The LEADER Award is divided into two categories: “Best Issuing Institution” and “Best Acquiring Institution”.

Bank of New Zealand received “The Best Issuing Institution in Australasia” award in recognition of its consistently innovative and effective risk management practices. The bank has successfully developed and deployed Liquid Encryption Numbers (LEN) within its own portfolio, has been a leader in the implementation of Verified by Visa and has consistently achieved the lowest fraud rate of any Australia/New Zealand issuers in the past three years.

"This award, and the fraud prevention results, are great recognition of the passion and capability of our people. I'm really proud of the team for having the best interests of our customers at the heart of everything they do - protecting them, and the trust they have in our products and channels BNZ has a culture and commitment that drives innovative solutions and adaptive strategies in the ever-changing fraud environment, which is the most important thing as we strive to reduce fraud in New Zealand each, and every, day," said Shelley Ruha, BNZ Director Product and Operations.

ANZ New Zealand Ltd received “The Best Acquiring Institution in Australasia” award for excelling in merchant risk management practices. The award recognises the bank’s achievements in PCI DSS compliance for all levels of merchants, its lowest fraud-to-sales rate in 2011, and the management and compliance team’s leadership role in managing PCI DSS issues across the industry.

“We are delighted with the award. ANZ recognises the value of security to its merchant customers and the award is recognition of the huge amount of work we have undertaken in recent years to protect our customers from fraud and help lead best practice risk management in the industry,” said Peter McLeod, ANZ National Bank General Manager Retail Payments.
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