Banks Lost N12.31billion To Fraud In 4 years – NIBSS

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has said that a total of N12.310 billion was lost to banking fraud through various channels between 2014 and 2017.

The Managing Director, NIBSS, Mr. Adebisi Shonubi who made this remarks’ on Thursday, also revealed that the volume of fraud perpetrated by fraudsters within the four years period stood 56,778, while the attempted fraud was N20.53 billion.

Addressing stakeholders at a one-day summit on fraud prevention and security trends in digital banking put together by MAXUT Consulting in conjunction with VASCO Data Security International, a publicly-traded cybersecurity technology company headquartered in the United States of America, Adebisi, represented by Olufemi Fadairo, Head, Industry Security Services, said that while fraud is generally on the decline, mobile fraud trend alone is on the increase.

He noted that though more fraud were reported in 2017, but actual loss value was a 24 percent reduction compared to the previous year in 2016, adding that Automated Teller Machines, ATM, recorded the highest value of fraud followed by mobile banking and then across the counter services.

Giving a breakdown, he said that in 2017 alone, 9,823 frauds were committed via Automated Teller machine, ATM, while N497.6 million were lost through the process. Mobile fraud followed with N347.7 million while 5,055 frauds volume was recorded through the channel. On the other hand, 314 fraud volume was perpetrated across the counter with N257.02 million actual value lost via the process.

1,691 frauds were perpetrated through internet banking, while N143.14 million was lost by bank customers; 982 frauds were committed though Point of Sales, PoS, while N79.4 million was lost through the process in 2017.

Shonubi advised bank customers to always lock their SIMs and phones to guard against fraudsters stealing and gaining access to information on their phones.

He said there is need for the telecommunication companies, telcos, to do end-to-end encryption of USSD transactions from the users to the banks and SIM swap/recycle checks to safeguard the customers.

Speaking, Mr. Mike Odusami, CEO/president MAXUT Consulting, said that the summit is geared towards making the financial system safer for people to have trust in the system and trying to plug every hole that fraudster take advantage of to defraud bank customers.

“Our solution as a technology company is really about fraud prevention; safeguarding the customers, identifying and authenticating the person and making sure that this is the person the bank authorizes because most of the transactions are not physical, they are done through electronic channels. And also in the background, you are monitoring everything that is go on in the system that is fraud monitoring and we have helped a lot of banks and financial institutions to do that,” he said.

He said that the firm is working with banks to develop solutions that would curtail frauds that are perpetrated through USSD channels, which is the frequently used channel by Nigerian banking customers.