FITC Identifies Top Three Most Prevalent Frauds in Nigerian Banking Sector

The Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) has identified computer/web fraud, mobile fraud, and POS-related fraud as the top three prevalent forms of fraudulent activity in the Nigerian banking sector during the first quarter of 2024.

FITC disclosed this in its recently released ‘Report on Fraud and Forgeries in Nigerian Banks for Q1 2024′.

According to the report, mobile fraud had the highest incidence, accounting for N768.84 million (25.73 percent) of the total fraud amount. Computer/web fraud followed at N680.75 million (22.78 percent), with POS fraud coming next at 18.93 percent.

However, the report also noted a significant decline in banks’ losses to fraud, which decreased by 77.62 percent to N468.42 million in the first quarter of 2024, down from N2.09 billion in the last quarter of 2023.

Additionally, there was a decrease in Nigerian bank workers’ involvement in fraud, dropping by 12.96 percent to 47 cases in Q1 2024 from 54 cases in Q4 2023. However, 35 staff appointments were terminated in Q1 2024, a notable increase from the nine terminations recorded in Q4 2023.

FITC stated, “The F&F report for Q1 2024 shows a significant decline in at least 60 percent of the areas measured when compared to the Q4 2023 report, and this is a welcome development. We need to understudy fraud control activities in this quarter and improve upon them to ensure that going forward, the numbers keep dropping while also implementing continuous vigilance and proactive measures.”

“Banks need to ensure the application of advanced fraud detection technologies and analytics to continuously monitor transactions for suspicious patterns and anomalies.”