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Speaking at the World Pension Summit in The Hague, Lloyd Komori, vice-president of risk management at Canada’s €43bn Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), argued that internet crime was one of the industry’s biggest risks.
“Of all external and non-investment-related risk for pension funds, this is the scariest,” he said, adding that his pension fund had listed cyber crime in the top three of its “risk shortlist”.
According to Komori, pensions funds acknowledge cyber security risk but do not seem to act “as if there is an enormous shortage of security experts”.
He pointed out that hackers are often after not just money but also valuable information.
Victoria Wang, senior lecturer on cyber crime at Portsmouth University, highlighted that cyber thieves operated everywhere there is money, including the pensions sector.
She said that, since the UK introduced the option of a lump-sum payment at retirement, cases of internet fraud at the expense of retirees – tricked into making fake investments – had doubled within a short period.