Banks and Specialised Deposit Taking Institutions lost about ¢56 million to banking fraud in 2022

This is compared to approximately ¢61million in 2021, about 7.88% decrease.

According to the Bank of Ghana, the year 2022 recorded 2,998 cases of attempted fraud cases for the banking and SDI sectors, as compared to 2347 cases in 2021. This represented a 27.74% increase.

The major drivers (top five) fraud typologies that impacted most of the institutions in the sector included forgery and manipulation of documents, fraudulent withdrawals, cheque fraud, cyber/email and cash theft (cash suppression).

Forgery emerged as prominent fraud typology

Forgery and manipulation of documents emerged as the prominent fraud typology, recording the highest loss of GH¢33million.

Another fraud typology which was also on the increase is fraudulent withdrawal.

This typology, the Bank of Ghana said involved money fraudulently withdrawn from customers’ accounts resulting in losses totalling ¢7million.

Most of the cases recorded in this fraud type, the Central abnk, said had the involvement of staff of banks and SDIs.

Cheque fraud also accounted for a loss value of¢5million. The most common modus operandi in cheque fraud was cloned cheques.

Staff fraud drops

The year 2022 saw a marginal reduction in the percentage of staff involvement to 47.84% from 53.46%.

This is as a result of strict sanctions imposed by the 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. Most of the incidents recorded involving staff had to do with cash theft (cash suppression) from customers’ accounts and happened to be a very common fraud typology in the Rural and Community banking sector.

Payment Service Providers experienced attempted fraud higher than in 2021

The Payment Service Providers sector also experienced some attempted fraud and associated losses due to the increasing usage by consumers of electronic channels for transactions.

The PSP sector reported a significant number of mobile money fraud incidents and loss values in 2022. Although fraud incidents reduced marginally in 2022 comparatively, the loss values reported were higher than that of 2021.

PSPs recorded 12,166 mobile money-related fraud incidents in 2022 compared to 12,350 incidents in 2021, indicating a 1% decrease.

The report concluded with directives for the Banking, SDIs and PSP sectors to help in the fight against fraud.