The Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Companies (GHASALCA) has called on financial institutions and customers in the financial sector to report any form of wrongful deductions and transactions to help stakeholders and the regulator fight fraud in the system.
Tweneboah Kodua Boakye, the Executive Secretary of the Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Companies, noted that the incidence of fraud will reduce if customers pay attention to wrong withdrawals from their accounts no matter how small it is.
“The number one security in all these things is the customer. If you look at the Bank of Ghana report, you will realise that ATM and POS frauds were about 36 per cent. If you look at it, it is more about the customer losing.”
Tweneboah Kodua Boakye
According to Mr. Tweneboah Kodua Boakye, a lot of financial institutions and customers have been victims through negligence by exposing their passwords and PIN codes.
“This is why we as an association have intensified education to customers not to give sensitive account information to anyone. We educate them and tell them not to give their passwords to even staff of financial institutions.”
Tweneboah Kodua Boakye
The Executive Secretary of the Ghana Association of Savings and Loans Companies, proposed, “We think that the more we do customer education and sensitisation, the more we will reduce these fraudulent acts.”
Mr Tweneboah Kodua Boakye argued that even though staff in the financial sector were cited in the Bank of Ghana report to have been the worst culprits, customers can help nib the situation in the bud if customers report issues of fraud to the authorities.
“My recommendation is that let us pay attention to our bank transactions and bank statements. When you see a debit and you did not initiate such a transaction please take steps to report.”
Tweneboah Kodua Boakye
Mr Tweneboah Kodua Boakye’s calls followed a publication by the Bank of Ghana which revealed that staff in the financial sector are the biggest culprits in fraud cases.
According to the Bank of Ghana, staff of Banks and other Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions involvement in fraud, constituted 53.46% of total fraud cases in 2021.
The statistics indicated that staff involvement in fraud cases increased to 278, as compared to 253 in 2020, representing an increase of 9.88 percent in year-on-year terms.
Rural and Community Banks Recorded the Highest Rate of Staff Involvement
The report by the Bank of Ghana further noted that in 2021, the Rural and Community Banks recorded the highest rate of staff involvement in fraud with a figure of 46.04%.
The Universal banks accounted for 28.06%, while the Savings and Loans companies accounted for 16.55%.
The Bank of Ghana explained that the consistently high rate of staff involvement in fraud cases reported by Banks and SDIs may be due to lack of adequate control systems in the financial institutions (especially the Rural Banking sector), poor background investigations for prospective, newly appointed and temporal staff, poor remuneration in the Banking and SDI sectors, among others.
The BoG further indicated that persistent rate of increase in staff involvement in fraud recorded over the last three years shows that the banking sector, especially the Rural and Community Banking sector has not put in place enough effort into curbing the trend.
