Nigeria financial sector loses N2.19bn to fraudsters

Nigeria’s financial services industry recorded an estimated N2.19 billion loss to fraud, showing about 82 percent increase in the reported fraud case when compared with 2015, and over 1200 percent when compared with 2014, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
However, the industry was able to reduce fraud by 2.7 percent when compared with the 2015 figure. Comparing the attempted fraud against the actual loss, the industry was able to salvage 49.7 percent of the total amount attempted by these fraudsters within the year.
“The story behind the figures clearly shows that as we move further down the digital path in payments, fraud attempts are bound to increase and the test of our strength as an industry will be how effective the collaboration among all stakeholders in warding off this imminent threat to the payments system is, not only domestically but also internationally,” Dipo Fatokun, director, banking and payment system department of CBN, said in 2016 annual report of the Nigeria electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF).
He said NeFF had consistently provided that unique platform that enabled the proactive sharing of resources to combat a common enemy, e-Fraud.
“Collaborations under NeFF have given rise to decisive outcomes that will steady the ship of our Payments System in Nigeria. Interventions in our Law Enforcement model has been made, attention of the Judiciary has been drawn to the need for more training of our judges on cybercrime, useful discussions have commenced with our telecom regulator in the face of an increased use of mobile platforms for payments (occasioned by the introduction of USSD), on more protective measures for users,” Fatokun said.
Looking into 2017, the financial industry as a whole must collaborate to ensure a wider gap exists between the attempted fraud and actual loss. With this surge in adoption and usage of payment systems, there has been a rise in the incidence of fraud in the Nigerian payments landscape.
Of the nearly N44 trillion in payments made across Nigeria in 2014, over N7 billion was reported as the value of “attempted” fraud and N6.22 billion was the actual loss value reported.
The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System plc (NIBSS) report also shows that in the same year, ATM fraud was the most attempted with 491 incidents and internet banking recorded the highest fraud value of N3.2 billion.
However, the naira on Wednesday strengthened against the US dollar gaining N0.45k to close at N305.50, as against N305.95k per dollar traded the previous day, data from the FMDQ show.
At the investors and exporters foex window, the naira depreciated by N1.67k or 0.46 percent, as it closed at the rate of N365.00k compared with N363.33k to the dollar quoted the previous day. At the black market, naira traded around N365 to N367 per dollar.

 

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