As part of moves to enhance security in the banking sector and reduce cases of fraud, Clari5, a leading global financial fraud management company has over the last two years partnered with CWG Ghana Limited to prevent crimes in the sector.

The partnership is coming at a time the Bank of Ghana (BoG) recently announced that GH¢61 million was lost to banking sector fraud in 2021 as compared to a loss of GH¢25 million in 2020—representing a 144percent increase in year-on-year terms.

Speaking to Joy Business on new strategies that will help nip the situation in the bud, the Chief Executive Officer of Clari5, Rivi Varghese said his company has developed new technologies that help stop fraud in the financial sector in real time.

Emphasizing on the need to adopt real-time technologies to stop fraud, Mr. Varghese disclosed that banks across the world are threatened every day as they are exposed to over $4 trillion fraud problems globally.

“Clari5 is now processing over 10 billion transactions and managing over 700 million accounts across marquee banks worldwide. With over 200 million accounts at a single site, Clari5 has the world’s largest implementation of a fraud management solution. We believe that the partnership will bring real-time intelligence to stop fraud in Ghana,” Mr. Varghese stressed.

He explained that Clari5 does not design products and dump it on banks but rather design tailor-made product depending on the focus and aspiration of the bank and its customers.

“Every human being has a soul, and banks capture customers’ soul. In fighting banking fraud, some banks take a silo approach or what I call piecemeal approach. You can prevent some basic frauds using a silo approach but when it comes to complex fraud, you need an integrated approach”.

Mr. Varghese maintained that it is important for banks in the financial sector to think outside the box, particularly in the case of Ghana where there is currently a payment revolution through fintechs.

He stated that even though fintechs play crucial roles in money transfer and payment, their activities are underwritten by banks which makes it imperative for banks to put in stringent measures to detect fraud that may be triggered from the platform of a fintech.

“Even though the central banks license fintechs, the responsibility of checking for fraud is largely on the banks. This is because the money is with the banks and not the fintech. The payment revolution in Ghana means that fraud activities may go up.”, he said.

On her part, the Managing Director of CWG Ghana Limited, Harriet Attram Yartey, said the partnership will provide a uniform platform that will not only monitor fraud patterns but also detect and stop them in real time to boost confidence in the banking system.

She maintained that this is important to keep Ghana’s financial ratings at a globally accepted level to help banks interconnect and partner with global financial giants. “This solution is designed to act like the body’s central nervous system and helps you to prevent financial fraud. I think the most important thing in this discussion is to prevent and not to wait for the fraud to happen before we react,” she said.

She stated that the platform will sit with banks but managed by Ghanaians to help transfer knowledge to indigenous IT experts to create jobs.