Fraudulent activities in the nation’s financial system has been on the increase as commercial banks in the Nigeria lost N15.15 billion to fraud incidences in 2018.
This represents an increase of N12.78 billion or 84.35 per cent compared to N2.37 billion loss reported in 2017 and a surge of N12.75 billion or 84.15 per cent rise against the amount lost in 2016 financial year.
The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) annual report for 2018 financial year said that the rising fraud incidences could be attributed to the increase in the sophistication of fraud related techniques such as hacking, cybercrime as well as increase in information technology related products and usage, fraudulent withdrawals and unauthorized credit.
According to NDIC a total of 37817 fraud cases were reported in 2018 against 26182 in 2017. The report also showed that total amount involved in 2018 stood at N38.93 billion compared to N12.01 billion in the preceding year.
The Corporation, however, said that the channels and instrument through which the reported frauds and forgeries were perpetrated indicated that internet and technology bases sources of frauds has the highest frequency, accounting for 59.2 per cent of fraud cases and 42.83 per cent of the actual total loss suffered by banks.
The NDIC report further stated that the number of ATM/Card related frauds cases declined from 16397 in 2017 to 10063 in the review period. The reduction in fraud s through ATM was attributed to improved security features of the cards as well as security awareness on the part of the users. The web-based fraud cases on the other hand increased from 7869 in 2017 to 12343 in 2018 financial year.
The NDIC report revealed that total number of staff involvement in fraud and forgeries rose to 899 in 2018 compared with 320 recorded in 2017, adding that the number of temporary staff involved in the fraud within the period stood at 394, accounting for 43.83 per cent of the total number of staff involved in frauds.
