News

Due to market pressures, the ADF has made the decision to review its interest rate settings.

We regularly review our interest rates to ensure they reflect market conditions whilst maintaining a balance between our customers’ loans and investment requirements. The ADF is very conscious of the impact these changes have on our customers.

The ADF is committed to funding Church mission and maintaining long-term stability, and this ultimately drives every decision we make. The new rates will be applied as follows and effective 1st September 2019:

If you have any questions on this or on other ADF matters, please do not hesitate to contact your ADF Relationship Manager.

To ensure your ADF Online log in details remain as secure as possible, the ADF recommends that you:

• Never instruct your computer to save your ADF Online password
• Never record your password anywhere either in writing or online
• Never share your login name or password

If you feel your details have been compromised, please contact the ADF immediately.

Due to a technical issue at the CBA, all Bpay transactions authorised through ADF Online on Wednesday 22^nd May were unable to be processed by close of business. These transactions have been successfully processed on Thursday 23^rd May. Please allow up to 48 hours for these payments to be received by the respective Billers. If invoices paid on the 22^nd were due in the next 2-3 days, we recommend contacting those Billers to advise of the delay. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

We are aware of a number of Archdiocesan customers who have received fraudulent invoices requesting payment for advertising in the Y/C News 2019. These invoices are a scam and must not be paid. An example of the fraudulent invoice can be found here. If you have received one of these invoices, please destroy or delete it immediately. Please contact the ADF if you have any questions.

The ADF will be closed on Monday 6^th May 2019 for Qld Labour Day. Any transactions loaded on or for the 6^th May will not be processed by the ADF until Tuesday 7^th May.

The ADF recently held our first Payments and Economic Environment Forum with a number of our education customers. The forum was well attended with over 30 attendees from a number of different colleges within the Archdiocese as well as representatives from Brisbane Catholic Education and Edmund Rice Education Australia.   The Forum was broken into two sessions, ADF in the morning and CBA presentation after lunch.

The CBA session was delivered by one of the CBA’s Senior Economists, Ryan Felsman. He spoke about the impacts global events and political climates are having on the Australian economy as well as the outlook for Australia for the next 12 months.

The ADF session was focused on the attendees, how they are supported by the ADF from both a product and service perspective and areas where additional focus or enhancements are required. This session was interactive and the feedback that the group shared has allowed the ADF to gain an insight into areas that are working well for our customers, those that should be improved and areas where additional focus and development are required.

A range of areas were identified as needing improvement and we will be working with the CBA and other partners to determine what can be achieved to enhance and improve their current offerings.

We have identified a number of target areas for the next 12 months, including:

·       Foreign currency provision

·       Prepaid debit cards

·       Do it yourself ADF Onine password resets

·       Smart Data and BPOINT reporting improvements

The ADF will provide regular feedback on progress as well as other initiatives that we continue to work on.

We would like to extend our thanks to the attendees for their participation and willingness to discuss things that are happening within their organisation now, as well as those that may occur into the future. We are extremely pleased with the success of this Forum and will be looking to add this as a regular event to the ADF calendar. If you believe your organisation would benefit from attending one of these sessions, you can register your interest now by emailing us at adf@bne.catholic.net.au

The ADF wishes to remind all customers to beware of invoice email scams as they can result in potentially large losses if not detected.

This scam involves scammers pretending to be legitimate suppliers advising changes to payment arrangements or bank account details held on file. The scammer will send an email which is disguised to appear almost identical to the legitimate suppliers’ email advising updated account information and potentially requesting payment.

How the scam works

This is quite a sophisticated scam where the scammers work very hard to make you believe the account details and payment requests are legitimate.

• Scammers hack into supplier email accounts and obtain information including customer lists, bank details and previous invoices.
• Your school or parish is then sent an email which appears as though it is from a known supplier requesting a change to the usual payment details and may also include a request for payment.
• The scammers either disguise the email address they are sending the email from or they have created a new address that appears almost identical to the legitimate one, this is called ‘spoofing’. Spoofed emails can be quite difficult to detect. For example the legitimate address is bob.smith@abctrading.com.au and the spoofed address could be bob.smith@abctrading.com or bob.smith@acbtrading.com.au
• The scam email will also often contain a copy of the suppliers logo, use the same message format and style and in some cases may even include an attachment on company letterhead which they obtained as part of their hack. It may even contain links to websites that are convincing fakes of the suppliers real website.

How to protect your school or parish

There are a number of steps that your business can take to protect yourself from scams of this nature.

• Educate your employees on this type of fraud, ways to detect potentially fraudulent emails and invoices as well as what to do if they receive one.
• Double check email addresses, if you look closely you should be able to spot a fake.
• Have a clearly defined process for verifying and payment accounts and invoices which tracks goods/services received and reconcile this to invoices.
• If you think an email you have received is suspicious, DO NOT reply. You should call the company on contact details that you already have on file or ones you have found in the phone directory, not the ones provided in the email.
• If the account details provided on the invoice or payment request are different from those used previously, call the company to confirm.

Additional information on this scam and how to protect your school or parish can be found at https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/invoice-email-scam-now-targeting-australian-businesses

If you are concerned that you may have been a victim of this or any other scam, please contact the ADF immediately.

We wish to advise that due to a processing error, all inward Bpay credit transactions deposited to customer accounts on 30th January 2019 were duplicated. We have now posted reversal transactions for all duplicated transactions, these will appear in your account with a reference of Reversed Deposit. We apologise for any inconvenience this error has caused. Please contact your Relationship Manager or the ADF directly if you have any questions.

The previously advised planned maintenance has now been completed. All customers please note that ADF Online has a new web address beginning with https://adfonline.org.au/.

The ADF wishes to advise all customers be aware of a current overpayment fraud trend that is impacting Queensland businesses.

Overpayment or ‘payment in error’ fraud involves fraudsters making payments via a business’s online payment link and then contacting the business to advise an incorrect payment amount was entered or the payment was made in error and they request the funds be returned via account transfer.

How the Fraud Works

This is quite a sophisticated fraud attempt where the fraudster works hard to make you believe they made the payment in error and that they need the funds returned immediately.

• The fraudster steals credit card details and then uses these stolen credit card details to process a payment using your online payment link (BPOINT page) for a relatively large amount
• The fraudster will then email you to confirm if you received the payment, they generally don’t ask for the money back immediately as they attempt to build a rapport with you first
• When you advise that you have received it, they will then ask for you to return the funds. They will either say that they only wish to make a small payment or donation and will request the difference be returned to them via account transfer or they will say they made the payment in error and request the full amount be returned via account transfer
• They have been successful in their fraud if you return the funds via account transfer and you will then be out of pocket the amount that you transferred plus the amount of the original transaction as the issuer of the stolen credit card will also reverse the transaction from your account.

How to Protect Your School or Parish

There are a number of steps that your business can take to protect yourself from frauds of this nature.

• Ensure your staff are aware of this scam and understand how it works so they can identify it, avoid it and report it.
• Perform regular reconciliations of your BPOINT payments to ensure you can allocate all payments
• If you receive any payments that you are not expecting or the records do not match any you have on file, refund the payment immediately back onto the card via BPOINT
• As per you merchant refund policy, refunds can only be granted in the method the payment was made eg a card transaction can only be refunded back to the card
• If you receive any emails requesting an overpayment or payment made in error be refunded via account transfer, do not action it. Advise the sender that you will refund the transaction directly back to the card and process it through BPOINT immediately.
• Under no circumstances should you refund the transaction via any other method.

More details on this scam can be found at https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/buying-or-selling/overpayment-scams

If you are concerned that you may have been a victim of this or any other scam, please contact the ADF immediately.