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Enterprise CEO urges banks to create anti-fraud unit

By on August 19, 2014

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Bank Limited, Mallam Ahmed Kuru, has called on banks to establish an anti-fraud department as a way of curbing the growing incidence of electronic fraud in the financial sector of the economy.

He said it was time for banks to collaborate to eradicate e-fraud, which he also described as a ‘common enemy.’

Kuru stated these in his keynote address at the just concluded Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum held in Lagos.

The managing director said statistics provided by the Financial Institutions Training Centre was frightening because it showed that electronic fraud had been on the rise since 2010.

According to him, this is worrisome because the increase in terms of the number, volume and sophistication is driven by high powered technology.

Unfortunately, he argued that bankers, auditors and internal control officials of financial institutions might not be as knowledgeable as the fraudsters themselves.

“Therefore, if we are to make progress in this direction, banks need to as a matter of urgency, establish anti-fraud departments with staff members that would always be ahead of the fraudsters in every sense of the word,” he added.

According to the Enterprise CEO, every financial institution should take the issue seriously because this year alone, the industry has lost about N2bn to electronic fraud in the first and second quarters.

Should the trend continue, Kuru said about N5bn would be the estimated loss by the end of 2014, adding, “If this is not checked, this will lead to unbearable level of capital erosion in the system.”

He explained that “the establishment of anti-fraud units will provide continuous improvement initiatives in fraud control and present a platform for the implementation of viable fraud management solution to highlight deviations of fraudulent transactions from normal transactions.

“It will also ensure compliance to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard initiatives of the Central Bank of Nigeria as well as guarantee the implementation of other fraud control measures and security initiatives both on the network, and applications of the bank. It will also ensure the implementation of a Database Access Monitory and Account Access Monitory solutions, among others.”

 

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