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Deposit money banks in Nigeria dismissed 49 employees due to their involvement in fraudulent activities between April and June this year, according to the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) in its Q2 2024 fraud and forgeries report.
This represents a 40% increase compared to the 35 termination cases recorded in Q1 2024.
The report indicated that 58 bank employees were involved in the 11,532 fraud cases reported during the period under review.
This represents a 23% increase compared to the 47 insider involvements reported in Q1 2024.
The FITC report also revealed that outsider involvement in fraud cases increased by 5.20%, from 10,397 in Q1 to 10,938 in Q2 2024.
The banks' losses to financial fraud in the second quarter of this year surged by over 900% to N42.6 billion compared to N468.4 million recorded in Q1, representing a 637% increase when compared to the N5.7 billion loss recorded in Q2 2023.
The amount lost in Q2 2024 alone exceeded the total amount lost to fraud by the banks in the full year 2023.
Miscellaneous and other fraud types constituted the largest loss, representing 96.46% of the total amount lost, followed by fraudulent withdrawals and computer/web fraud.
The FITC recommended that banks leverage technology, strengthen access controls, implement multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls, and intensify fraud prevention training for all employees.
