The number of attempted fraud cases in the banking industry reduced by 12.09% in 2021 to 2,347, a report by the Bank of Ghana has revealed.

However, the year recorded a loss value of ¢61 million as compared to a loss of ¢25 million in 2020. This represented a 144% increase in year-on-year terms.

According to the report dubbed Banking, Specialized Deposit Taking Institutions and Electronic Money Issuers (EMI) Fraud, the significant fraud types that accounted for this figure included Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card and Point of Sale (POS) fraud, impersonation, lending and credit fraud, forgery and manipulation of documents, cash suppression and E-money fraud.

However, there were other fraud types, which also recorded some huge losses. Notable among these are impersonation, lending and credit fraud, suppression of cash, E-money and forgery and manipulation of documents.

The report added that the increase in the usage of electronic and digital platforms in the financial sector resulted in an increase in ATM card and POS fraud.

ATM card/POS related fraud recorded the highest loss of ¢22million. This can be attributed to negligence of some customers and weak systems of some financial institutions.

Another significant fraud type was impersonation which recorded a loss of ¢10million. This loss can be attributed to lack of due diligence on the part of bank staff and customers of financial institutions when carrying out transactions.

The EMI sector reported a significant number of mobile money (MOMO) fraud incidents and loss values in 2021.

EMIs recorded 12,350 MOMO related fraud incidents in 2021. The total value of fraud reported by EMIs for the 2021 amounted to ¢14.2 million.

The total E-Money related loss recorded by EMIs in 2021 amounted to approximately ¢12.8million.

BoG initiative to address fraud

The Bank of Ghana said it is strengthening its fraud monitoring activities and enforcement of required internal controls and risk governance within banks, SDIs, EMIs and other regulated entities.

The Bank of Ghana has also issued a notice to the public, banks and other regulated entities on the usage of the Ghana Card as the primary identification document for all financial transactions. All Banks and SDIs are therefore required to pay particular attention to this directive and ensure compliance. This the Central Bank mitigate the incidence of fraud in the financial sector.

Again, a secretariat has been set up at the Financial Stability Department of the Bank of Ghana to coordinate the activities of the Committee for cooperation between Law Enforcement Agencies and the Banking Community (COCLAB). This is to ensure that COCLAB achieves its mandate of developing and implementing effective controls to mitigate fraud in the sector