The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on Wednesday said that it is allocating more resources to tackle financial and banking related frauds, following a surge in deception cases last year.

Arthur Yuen, the authority’s deputy chief executive, said during a press conference that over 40,000 fraud cases were reported to the police in the first 11 months of last year – an increase of 8.7 percent from a year earlier.

Losses incurred totaled HK$8.5 billion, meaning some HK$25 million were lost each day -- an amount Yuen said was "really concerning".

"We have seen very important, serious cases of people losing their life savings simply because they have clicked on links or they have answered calls without caution," he said, adding that a new promotional campaign was launched to discourage people from clicking onto fraudulent hyperlinks.

A suspicious account alert system was also expanded last month for automatic teller machines to issue fraud alert over high-risk transfers.

Other measures, meanwhile, include a "Money Safe" tool that the authority hopes to make available in the first or second quarter of this year, to allow customers to lock all or part of their bank account balances.

Separately, Yuen said the city's banking sector posted the slowest profit growth in three years, with the aggregated pre-tax profit among 30 retail banks increasing by only 8.3 percent year on year in the first three quarters of 2024, compared to the 62 percent annual growth registered in 2023.