Bank customers in Nigeria lost N472m to fraud in the first quarter of 2023, according to a report by FITC.
Within the same period, there was a total of 12,553 cases of fraud.
The report was published on the website of FITC.
FITC’s institutional members are members of the Nigerian Banker’s Committee, which comprises the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation and all licensed banks in Nigeria.
It was a significant drop from the amount lost to fraudulent banking activities in Q4, 2022, which recorded a whopping N3.18bn loss to fraudsters across banking platforms. Effectively, the losses declined by 85.13 per cent in Q1 2023.
The FITC data also revealed that there was a 79.44 per cent decrease in the total amount involved in fraud cases in Q1 2023 compared to the previous quarter, with a decrease from N2.59bn to N12.58bn.
The total number of fraud cases reported in Q1, 2023 also declined by 14.07 per cent.
According to the report, a total of 12,553 cases were reported in the first quarter of this year compared with 14,609 cases recorded in the preceding quarter.
It was also noted that fraud occurred mostly through mobile, computer/web, and PoS, which was consistent with the trend from the previous quarter.
“For Q1 2023 under review, an analysis of the magnitude-based ranking of fraud categories shows that mobile fraud has the highest ranking which accounts for N1.1bn (42.72 per cent), and this is followed by the computer/web fraud category at N646m (24.99 per cent). This was followed by PoS fraud at N450m (17.41 per cent) and fraudulent withdrawals at N139m (5.36 per cent),” the report said.
