Fraudsters Steal N42.6 billion From Access Bank, Others in Three Months -Fitc Report

In a report released by the Financial Institutions Training Centre (Fitc) in Quarter 2, 2024, Access Bank, Eco Bank, FCMB, and others lost a whopping N42.6 billion to fraudsters.

According to the report, there is a surge in fraudulent activities across banking platforms in Nigeria, leading to a huge loss experienced by Access Bank, Eco Bank, FCMB, and other banks in Nigeria within the space of three months.

ENigeria Newspaper reports that the released FITC report mentioned that without adding the Q1 record, the amount lost in Q2 2024 alone surpassed the total amount lost to fraud by Nigerian banks in the full year 2023. Meanwhile, careful Analysis of FITC’s data for last year showed that the banks lost a total of N9.4 billion throughout the year.

The above analysis clearly shows that the Q2 loss indicates an 8,993% increase in loss when compared with the N468.4 million lost in Q1 2024. This also represents a 637% increase when compared with the N5.7 billion loss recorded in Q2 2023.

In terms of the fraud types, FITC said ‘miscellaneous and other fraud’ types constituted the largest loss, representing 96.46% of the total amount lost, with a value of N41.14 billion.

This was followed by losses from fraudulent withdrawals and computer/web fraud, amounting to approximately N781.2 million and N400.7 million, respectively.