The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) yesterday said banks in the country lost over N5 billion to fraudsters between January and September 2020.
The agency said the losses, for only nine months, was comparable to the financial losses insured institutions suffered for the entire 12 months of 2019.
The NDIC’s executive director, corporate services, Mrs. Omotola Abiola-Edewor, stated this at the Corporation’s annual capacity building programme for law enforcement agencies.
The programme with the theme: “Effective investigation and prosecution of banking malpractices that led to the failure of banks in Nigeria”, was held in Lagos.
According to her, a total of 52,754 fraud cases were reported to the NDIC against 37,817 in 2018 and 26,182 in 2017, according to the NDIC’s 2019 annual report.
She explained that the fraud incidents could be attributed to an increase in the sophistication of fraud-related techniques, such as hacking, cybercrime as well as an increase in Information Technology related products and usage, fraudulent withdrawals and unauthorised credit.
“The channels and instruments through which the reported frauds and forgeries were perpetrated indicated that ATM/Card-related fraud had the highest frequency, accounting for 49.78 per cent of fraud cases followed by web-based internet banking frauds with 21.02 per cent. However, the value of losses was higher in web-based internet banking frauds against ATM card-related fraud,” she said.