Commercial banks in Nigeria sacked 35 of their employees between January and March this year over their involvement in fraud.
The Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) revealed this in its Q1 2024 fraud and forgeries report recently released.
This indicates a 288% increase in the number of employees whose contracts when compared with the nine cases of termination recorded in Q4 2023.
However, staff involvement in fraud declined by 12.96%, sliding from 54 cases in Q4 2023 to 47 in Q1 2024.
Outsider involvement
According to the report, outsider involvement in fraud cases increased by 0.45% which is a slight increase when compared to the previous quarter, with the number rising from 10,350 cases in Q4 2023 to 10,397 cases in Q1 2024.
Meanwhile, the banks’ losses to financial fraud in the first quarter of this year declined by 77.62% compared to the previous quarter.
The FITC report revealed that banks lost N468.42 million in the first quarter, a substantial decline from the N2.09 billion loss they recorded in Q4, 2023.
In terms of the amount involved in fraud, the report also showed that a total of N2.99 billion was involved in fraud in the quarter, representing a 56.73% decline when compared with the N6.91 billion recorded in the preceding quarter.
The decline in reported fraud cases
According to the report, there was a decline in the number of fraud cases reported by the banks compared to the previous quarter.
“For Q1 2024, a total of eleven thousand, four hundred and seventy-two (11,472) cases were reported, and when compared to the twelve thousand, four hundred and five (12,405) cases recorded in the Q4 2023, a 7.52 per cent decrease is noted,” the organisation stated.
While commending the decline in fraud activities and losses in Q1 2024, FITC said the banks would need to be more vigilant and also understudy their fraud control activities in this quarter and improve upon the same to ensure that going forward the numbers keep dropping.
It added that the banks need to ensure the application of advanced fraud detection technologies and analytics to continuously monitor transactions of suspicious patterns and anomalies.
“Recently, there has been a surge in emerging technologies, these technologies include Artificial Intelligence (A), Machine Learning (ML), Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Advanced Analytics, Predictive Modelling etc. These emerging technologies can be used to identify patterns of fraud, and proactively detect emerging frauds,” FITC said.
It, however, cautioned the financial institutions to align with regulatory standards and adopt transparent decision-making processes and ethical considerations while adopting the technologies.
