*The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation urges consumers of financial products and services to ensure their phones have passwords,  and they must not share their bank mobile application passwords to anyone to avoid being scammed by cyberfraudsters

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

As bank frauds surge, and cybercriminals are getting more creative with stealing from consumers in the virtual space, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), again, has warned bank customers and consumers of financial products and services to ensure that their tokens are well-secured.

The NDIC issued the warning in a statement issued Friday, March 10, 2023.

On securing your card details the regulatory Commission said consumers should not display their banking details to anyone.

ConsumerConnect reports   a credit or debit card CVV is a security feature called “Card Verification Value”, which the vendor will require in order to process a transaction.

The NDIC stated: “The Corporation said that customers should ensure that their phones had password and they must not share their bank mobile application password to anyone.

“NDIC also warned bank customers to ensure that their token were secured and other parties did not have access to it.”

The regulator also urged Nigerians to ensure their credit/debit card numbers and CVVs are not exposed to authorised persons.

19 Banks’ employees sacked for frauds, says FITC

As regards the increase in banking frauds in recent years, some Nigerian bank workers are taking advantage of their access to client information to defraud customers customers, according to FITC report.

The Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) report had examined fraudulent activities in the Nigerian banks.

The report was said to have found that 19 banks’ employees were sacked between April and June 2022 due to their involvement in fraudulent activities in the banking institutions.

This represents a 90 percent increase compared to 10 recorded in Q1 2022, the FITC noted.

Likewise, comparison of the data with the same quarter in 2021 indicated an alarming 375 percent increase, as only four dismissals for fraud were recorded in Q2 2021.

With a total of N1.17 billion lost to frauds across 24 banks in the country in the second quarter (Q2) of 2022, 73 bank staff were reported to have been involved in the activities, a 27.6 percent increase when compared with 60 recorded in the first quarter of the year.

Transaction fraud channels

The report also showed that mobile fraud, which includes fraud activities through USSD transactions, recorded the highest occurrence, followed by Internet fraud and Point of Sale (PoS) frauds.

Highlighting the various channels where the frauds had been committed, FITC stated: “Evaluating the total amount lost to frauds in Q2 2022 reveals that Mobile Fraud accounts for 38.18% at N449 million loss, followed by Miscellaneous & other types of fraud accounting for 32.19% (N379 million) and Suppression of Entries at 11.02% (N129.64million).

“A closer look at the unusual amount recorded under the Miscellaneous fraud revealed that the fraud was carried out via E-naira for which the banks were liable.”