Over GHS80 million lost by banks, SDIs and PSPs in 2022 through fraud – BoG reveals

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has released a report detailing various attempted and successful fraudulent activities recorded by Ghana’s Banking Institutions, Specialized Deposit-Taking Institutions (SDIs), and Payment Service Providers (PSPs).

Fraud cases recorded among the three institutions was 15,164.

In the banking sector, GHS33 million was lost through Forgery and Manipulation of documents, GHS7 million was lost through Fraudulent withdrawals, while Cheque Fraud and email fraud resulted in the loss of GHS5.1 million and GHS4.3 million respectively.

In the SDI Sector, the breakdown shows a loss of GHS3.9 million in 2022 through Cash Theft (Cash Suppression).

Meanwhile, the total loss value of fraud reported by PSPs for 2022 amounted to GHS27 million.

Put together, a colossal amount of GHS80.3 million was lost by banks, SDIs and PSPs in 2022 through fraud.

While staff involvement in fraud persists, the numbers have started trending downwards as a result of strict sanctions imposed by Bank of Ghana and strong advocacy for improved controls by the sector institutions.

The fraud cases involving staff decreased to 188 in 2022, as compared to 278 in 2021.

As part of steps to address fraud, the Bank of Ghana in its report said it will intensify sensitisation programmes in person and on television/radio shows to educate and sensitise the public to improve the public’s understanding of financial matters as well as their rights and responsibilities.

The Central Bank further noted that it will continue to engage Law Enforcement Agencies to deal with the prosecution of persons involved in fraud through the Committee for Cooperation between Law Enforcement Agencies and the Banking Committee (COCLAB).

Meanwhile, all Banks are directed to immediately communicate fraud cases in their institutions to the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Association of Banks to alert all others on the approaches deployed to avoid recurrence.

Among other things, Banks and SDIs that use mobile applications and Internet banking platforms are directed to enable a multi-factor authentication code for their applications to help protect customers.

On the other hand, PSPs have been directed to share fraud information amongst themselves to ensure fraudulent actors are blocked across all service providers’ platforms, to reduce the risk of fraud re-occurrence.