Banks must improve their systems to check rising spate of financial fraud – e-Crime Bureau

Cyber security firm, e-Crime Bureau is encouraging businesses in the financial sector to beef up their security and ensure they safeguard their systems to mitigate the occurrence of fraud.

This follows a recent report by the bank of Ghana which indicated an increase in fraud-related losses by Banks and specialized deposit taking institutions in Ghana in 2021 to GH¢61 million as compared to figures from 2020

Principal Consultant at the e-Crime Bureau, Philip Debrah Danquah finds the development rather worrying.

“It gives you the sense to think about what is really happening? You have to do a direct introspection on what is really happening, which is why our professional advice is that the financial institution shouldn’t gloss over the issues that happened, they should interrogate it by investigation. They should use a more proactive intelligence approach in trying to anticipate some of these things that happen.”

The rise in the amount lost to fraud per the report by the bank of Ghana was 144 % higher than that of the previous year that is 2020.

This is despite the fact that the number of cases recorded from last year had reduced significantly by about 12 percent.

The significant fraud types that accounted for the GH¢61 million loss included ATM card/POS fraud, impersonation, lending and credit fraud, forgery and manipulation of documents, cash suppression and E-money fraud.

The increase in usage of electronic and digital platforms in the financial sector resulted in an increase in ATM card/POS fraud

Mr Danquah stated that the situation raised a lot of concern and efforts must be made to urgently curtail it.

“It can go a bit sophisticated that is why the banks need to really understand that there could be miscreants within the people in the organization who are trying to help them protect the investment of stakeholders and the deposits of clients.”

“They need to be more proactive and institute certain whistleblower measures to ensure that people are found out through some of these approaches whereby they can be criminalized and those that are able to identify those perpetrating the fraud within are also given the praise.”

Source: B&FT