Joe Ogini
The Financial Institutions Training Centre, FITC, has revealed that there is a monumental increase in the rate of fraud in some financial institutions in the country in recent time.
According to FITC, which made this revelation on ‘fraud and forgeries in Nigerian banks’ for Q2’23, the total amount of money involved recorded in about 24 banks within the quarter of the year, when compared to Q1 ’23, rose to a whopping N9.75billion from N2.58billion, an increase of about 277 per cent in the Q1’23. Thus bringing the total losses in the period to N5.79billion as against N472million lost in the preceding period.
In the report FITC observed that the losses were recorded by 24 banks that filed their returns on fraud cases for the period, adding that outsider involvement in the fraud cases dropped by 6.4 per cent, while staff involvement rose by 22.2 per cent within the period.
FITC is owned by the Banker’s Committee, which comprises the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC, all licensed banks, and discount houses in Nigeria.
It was established to provide innovative knowledge solutions and capacity building programmes that develop and strengthen resources for the Nigerian financial services sector.
According to the FITC report, fraudulent loans accounted for the highest loss at 94.35 percent with a value of N5.46 billion, followed by mobile fraud, which accounted for 3.39 per cent of the total loss amounting to N196 million.