Following the worrying trend of banking fraud reported by the Bank of Ghana, the Ghana Association of Banks has turned to advanced technological innovations to remedy the situation.
Unscrupulous activities put the financial deposits of customers at risk, according to the Bank of Ghana 2023 Fraud Report. Incidents of fraud increased by 5% across the banking sector, and a whopping GH¢ 88 million was lost by banks due to fraud – representing a 7% increase from the previous year.
More worrying is the involvement of banking staff expected to protect the funds of depositors in these fraud cases. The number of bank employees implicated in fraud jumped from 188 in 2022 to 274 in 2023.
These developments have become a cause of concern for the Ghana Association of Banks and hence the association has developed a proposal of some measures to be adopted by the financial institutions.
Prominent in these proposals is the call to utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to combat the menace that threatens confidence in the financial sector.
GAB believes that integrating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into fraud-combating frameworks has the potential to improve the capacities of the banks to identify and prevent these highly technology-driven fraud cases.
Not only will these technologies help to timely identify and curb fraud cases, but they will also help the banks to adapt to emerging fraud schemes, learning from past data making them invaluable tools in combating complicated fraud cases.
The Ghana Association of Banks envisions that with the adoption of these modern technologies, the banks can stay a step ahead of unscrupulous fraudsters and hence protect customers and safeguard the sector’s financial integrity.
