A total of 155 staff of banks and special deposit-taking institutions (SDIs) in the country were fired for their involvement in 365 cases of fraud in 2024 alone.
This is contained in the Bank, SDI and PSP 2024 Fraud Report published by the Bank of Ghana this week.
Per the report, the 365 fraud cases involving bank and SDI staff was 91 cases more than the 274 recorded in 2023, which represents a 33% increase in just one year. This indicates that in spite of the regulatory and operational measures put in place to stem financial sector fraud, workers of the sector are still engaged in fraud.
The report noted that, of the 365 cases record last year, 274 of them, representing 75% involved direct cash theft and cash suppression, which is basically a practice where staff manipulate documents and or engage in unauthorized transactions which benefits them personally, but do not benefit the bank and the customer.
Total number of fraud
But the 365 cases involving bank and SDI workers is just a small portion of the total number of fraud types recorded across the sector – namely banks, SDI and payments service providers (PSPs), which include mobile money operators.
Per the report, the total number of fraud cases across all the three sub-sectors was 16,733 in 2024, which represents a 5% increase over that of 2023, which stood at 15,865.
These cases, according to the report, correspond to total value at risk of approximately Gh¢99 million in 2024 as compared to Gh¢88 million in 2023, indicating an increase of 13%.
E-fraud still reigns
What is significant is that out of the total of 16,733 cases recorded for the whole year, as many as 15,673 representing 93.67% of case were electronic fraud incidents reported by payment service providers. The amount lost in those cases also jumped from GHS16 million in 2023 to GHS19 million in 2024, representing an 18% increase over the period.
The report also noted that even though the number of cases involving cash theft and suppression by bank staff increased significantly, the amount lost through that type of fraud actually dropped heavily from over GHS16.7 million in 2023 to just about GHS3.9 million last year.
Losses from fraudulent cash withdrawals also dropped heavily from GHS13 million to just GHS1.8 million. Other fraud types that saw significant decreases in the amounts lost were as follows:
- Cyber/email fraud dropped from over GHS10.5 million in 2023 to GHS933,000 in 20204
- Cheque Fraud dropped from over GHS6 million to just GHS28,000.
- Sim Swap Fraud dropped from over GHS4 million to zero.
On the flip side, some fraud times saw significant increases in the amounts lost over the period under review.
Forgery and manipulation of document which accounted for about GHS7.5 million in 2023, ballooned to over GHS53.5 million in 2024, while losses through fraud by impersonation also jumped exponentially from GHS674,500 to about GHS5.77 million over the same period.
The Bank of Ghana has, as usual, urge industry players to put measures in place to stem fraud.
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