SINGAPORE — An employee of the United Overseas Bank (UOB) here allegedly fell prey to a Chinese police impersonation scam, resulting in some information of 1,166 customers being disclosed as a result.

The customers were China nationals and the information released include the customer names, identification and mobile numbers as well as account balances.

In a news release on Friday (May 7), UOB said that the customers’ bank account numbers were not disclosed and that its “IT systems remain secure”.

When contacted, the police told TODAY that they were not commenting on the case because it was under investigation.

Preliminary findings by the bank found that one of its employees was allegedly deceived by a scam into revealing the information of the bank customers with Singapore-based accounts.

UOB did not state when it first detected the scam, but said that it is working closely with the police in their investigations.

It also said that its employee has since been suspended and is assisting the authorities in their investigations.

“We expect the highest standards of professional conduct from our people at all times as part of maintaining the trust our customers place in us,” the bank said.

“We are very sorry that our customers have been placed in this position. We will continue to make every effort to work with them on keeping their accounts safe.”

UOB said that it has since written to all of the affected customers and taken “several precautionary measures to protect them as they may be targeted by scammers”.

Some of the measures it took were:

• To immediately disable the affected customers’ internet and mobile banking access

• Advise customers to reset their digital banking access

• Step up its account monitoring of the affected accounts

• Set an SMS alert threshold of S$1 for any online money transfers

It has also posted scam protection notices on the login webpages of its UOB personal internet banking and UOB Mighty services, as well as a public education notice on its social media channels.

On Saturday, a Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) spokesperson said the central bank took a “serious view” of the customer data breach. It has been “actively engaging the bank on its internal controls, mitigation measures, and management of the customers involved”, and the spokesperson said MAS would take action against UOB if its “regulatory requirements were breached or supervisory expectations not met”.