FITC reveals three most prevalent frauds in Nigerian banking sector

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

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

The report stated that mobile fraud had the highest ranking, accounting for N768.84 million (25.73 percent) of the total amount.

It was followed by Computer/Web fraud at N680.75 million (22.78 percent) and POS Fraud came next at (18.93 percent).

However, the report said banks’ losses to fraud declined by 77.62 percent to N468.42 million in the first quarter of 2024 from N2.09 billion in the last quarter of 2023.

Also, Nigerian banks’ workers’ involvement in fraud declined 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, significantly higher than in Q4 2023 where staff terminations were only recorded for nine cases.

FITC said, “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 same 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 of suspicious patterns and anomalies.”