The Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NEFF) has urged new policies and enhanced coordination to combat the growing trend of electronic scams after reports showed that the banking industry had already lost N9.5 billion to electronic fraud in 2023.
NEFF, led by the Central Bank of Nigeria, focused on “New Strategies for Combating e-Fraud in a Cashless Environment” at its third quarter general meeting in Lagos yesterday as a result of electronic scam trends.
Premier Oiwoh, Managing Director of the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), addressed the gathering, highlighting the troubling development of e-fraud in the nation, particularly through betting platforms.
According to Temidayo Adekanye, Chief Risk Officer of NIBBS, “recently, we had the cashless policies from CBN, which caused a dramatic increase in the volume of transactions in the industry, which varied as much as the impact of the volume of fraud in the industry itself.” Now, increasing efficiency has resulted in a significant surge in scam across the business. The overall fraud recorded through the industry forum portal in Q1 2023 was N5.1 billion.
“In terms of fraud trends over the last five years, we’re looking at about N3 billion in 2019 and about N9.5 billion to date in 2023.” Over the previous five years, fraud losses have skyrocketed.”
“So, from a current perspective, from January to July 2023, there has been a slight jump between June and July, a 39% increase with 8,649, and with actual fraud losses in July 2023, we’re looking at N1.2 billion, a 54% increase over the period.” As you can see from the data for January, we reported around N2.7 billion in real fraud damages.”
“What we see most is that the primary channels are the betting platforms,” he added. So once the money reaches the betting platform, a wallet account, or, in certain situations, POS agents, it becomes a black hole. There is no way you can get that money back. We’re talking about a potential 5% recovery rate throughout the sector. So we must all identify those accounts, POS agents, cryptocurrency accounts, and, in certain situations, transactions.”
“Today, we are here to continue that conversation to look at new strategies by which we can combat e-fraud,” said NeFF Chairman and Director, Payment Systems Management of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Musa Jimoh, speaking on efforts to attain zero fraud in the business. If we do not resist cybercriminals, they will suffocate us and destabilize the entire system. As a result, we must all work together to determine how we can make life incredibly tough for cybercriminals. We must consider new methods, techniques, and more efficient methods of improving and safeguarding the banking and payment infrastructure, as well as educate ourselves on how to safeguard our bank credentials or tokens and all the information that the banks have provided to us to safeguard.
“The more we know about what they’re doing, the better protected we are.”
“The goal is to have zero fraud, but you know, this is a gradual process because they’re exploiting other areas as you’re building techniques.” As more individuals enter the financial sector and more transactions occur, people become more exposed, and so we will continue to promote enlightenment education, which is why it will be a lengthy process.”
“But I know that with the kind of enlightenment and push from the bankers’ committee and other stakeholders, a lot of Nigerians will be well educated to know that they have to be very secret about all the accounting details, and thus we anticipate that the incidence of fraud will taper down almost to zero.”
