By David Agba and Amaka Ifeakandu, Ilorin
Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has listed poor linkage access roads to remote locations, inadequate telecom services in most locations as visible challenges confronting e-banking, mobile payment and deposit insurance in the country. (Managing Director NDIC, Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim who made this observation in Ilorin Kwara State at the seminar organised for business editors and finance correspondents said high over head cost on the part of operators relying on alternative power source to ensure effective and efficient delivery also electronic banking.
He said that the NDIC’s Act of 2006 mandated all deposit-taking financial institutions to send returns on frauds, forgeries and other financial malpractices to the Corporation on the monthly basis. He said that banks are expected to notify the Corporation on any staff that have been dismissed or have their appointments terminated or advised to resign of retire on
grounds of financial infractions. Ibrahim said that it was worrisome to note that the banking system had continued to reccord very high incidences of fraud and forgeries in recent years.
He said that reported cases of frauds increased from 3786 in 2013 to 10612 in 2014,representing a rise of 183 per cent. He however said that amount of funds lost to fraud increased by N430 million or 7.6 per cent from N5.76 recorded the previous year to N6.19 billion. The report also said that the attempted fraud cases in the banking sector increased by 17.49 per cent from N21.795 billion in 2013 to N25.608 billion at the end of December 2014.
Speaking further he said the types and nature of frauds and forgeries were largely web-based on-line banking/ATM card related, fraudulent transfer/withdrawal of deposit frauds and suppression of customers deposits among others. He said the major causes of frauds in the bank include weak Information Technology infrastructure, poor internal controls due to prevalence of contract clerks and tellers.
He said it was discovered that temporary staff, clerks and tellers accounted for 64 per cent of the frauds and forgeries in 2014 which required urgent attention to improve the electronic payments controls, IT security, human capital and integrity profiling as well as motivation of staff. He said that these developments needs urgent regulatory intervention in order to achieve much desired financial discipline in the banking system. He said there was need to cosolidate on the gains of various reforms in the banking sector in line with the wave of change of the present administration in Nigeria.
