Nigerian banks lost a total of N42.6 billion due to fraud and forgeries between April and June 2024.
The Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) revealed this in its Q2 2024 Fraud and Forgeries report, which was published on Saturday.
According to the report, which draws on data from 28 deposit money institutions across Nigeria, there has been a troubling rise in fraudulent activities.
This amount far exceeds the total losses from fraud in 2023, which was N9.4 billion.
The report also highlighted an alarming 8,993% increase compared to the N468.4 million lost in Q1 2024, and a 637% rise from the N5.7 billion lost in Q2 2023.
Miscellaneous and other types of fraud accounted for the majority of the losses, with N41.14 billion, representing 96.46% of the total. This was followed by losses from fraudulent withdrawals and computer/web fraud, which amounted to around N781.2 million and N400.7 million, respectively.
FITC has called on Nigerian banks to fortify their access controls to settlement files to better protect against such fraudulent activities.
“Access controls should also be strengthened by limiting access to settlement files to only a small, vetted group of authorised personnel given the appropriate clearance and regularly trained on the latest security protocols.
“The implementation of multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls can aid in reducing the risk of unauthorised changes to settlement files,” FITC stated.