Three banks report 26,877 fraud cases in H1

Access Bank, GTB and Fidelity Bank recorded 26,877 fraud cases in the first six months of the year, according to analyses of their financial reports for the first half of 2022.

This was a 56.45 per cent decrease from the 61,715 fraud cases that were recorded by the banks between June and December, 2021.

In line with Section 5.1.2 (L) of the CBN Code of Corporate Governance, the Guaranty Trust Holding Company and subsidiary companies reported 15,004 fraud incidences in the period under review.

The bank reported that N1.55bn and $50,700 were involved in these cases, with N158.37m recorded as actual/expected loss.

Similarly, Access Bank Plc reported N1.2bn as fraud losses for the period. The bank recorded 10,706 fraud attempts in the first half of 2022.

About 7,104 attempts were successful while 3,602 were unsuccessful. The sum of N12.55bn was involved in these attempts

According to the bank, 7,928 electronic/USSD fraud cases were recorded in the period under review, with 849 successful attempts.

Fraudulent transfer/withdrawals/reactivation of accounts had the most amounts involved, with successful attempts worth N9.48bn made and actual loss worth N1.08bn.

Other successful and unsuccessful fraud attempts fell under the following categories: cash theft/ suppression/pilferage/dry posting, among others.

Fidelity Bank PLC recorded 1,167 fraud incidents in the period under review. The amount involved was N471.01m and $8,367 but actual loss was N4.90m and $2,400.

According to the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System, Nigeria’s has one of the most advanced electronic payment capabilities in the world. It said the increase in transaction processing speed and available channels had also created an avenue for fraudulent transactions to thrive.

In its ‘NIBSS Insight: Fraud in the Nigeria Financial Services’ report, it said, “Statistically, even a 1 per cent successful fraud rate would result in 100,000 successful fraudulent transactions daily.

“This would directly impact customer’s faith in the entire system and could significantly impact our financial inclusion drive as well as the CBN cashless policy.”

Speaking on its fraud risk management, GTCO said, “Causal analysis of key fraud and forgeries incidents (over the counter or cybercrimes) identified in the Group or prevalent in local and global business environments are carried out and reported.

“Likely and unlikely loss estimations are also determined in the process as input in the OpRisk capital calculation process. The focus in Fraud Risk Management is to ensure that processes for preventing, deterring, detecting fraud and forgeries incidents, and sanctioning offenders are effective.”

Commenting, ICT expert and Senior Partner of e86 Limited, Olugbenga Odeyemi, said several fraud cases needed insiders from banks.

He stated, “Some of the hacking and fraud cases that we’ve seen happened not because of the lack of security on the banks’ electronic platforms, but because of poverty, greed, and sometimes the lack of education on the part of the customers.

“Other than asking banks to invest more in the security of their platforms, it’s equally important that banks spend more resources on educating their customers.

“That said, several fraud cases couldn’t have happened without the help of insiders in some of the banks. I think Nigerian banks should spend more money on the welfare of their staff while making appropriate changes to their internal processes, starting from their hiring processes.”