At least three financial fraud types saw some exponential growth in 2022, compared to the numbers recorded in 2021.
The three were cyber/email fraud, fraudulent withdrawals and impersonation.
This is contained in the Bank, Special Deposit-taking Institutions (SDIs) and Payment Service Providers (PSPSs) Fraud Report for 2022, published by the Bank of Ghana on Thursday.
Among the three, fraudulent withdrawals saw the highest level of growth over the period. From 19 cases in 2021, fraudulent withdrawals increased to 347 in 2022, representing a very high 1726.32% growth year-on-year.
The second fraud type which recorded huge increase between 2021 and 2022 was impersonation, recording a very significant 1325% increase from 20 cases in 2021 to 285 cases in 2022.
Cyber/email fraud comes in next with a 744% increase from just 50 cases in 2021 to 422 case in 2022.
The three cohorts forms part of the top five main fraud types, which include cash theft
(cash suppression) and E-Money frauds as the other two.
Among the five, though, cash theft (cash suppression) was the highest recorded fraud type, and was predominantly in the Rural and Community banking sector. The year 2022 saw a 6.01% increase from in cash theft, from 1,530 in 2021 to 1,622.
Meanwhile, E-money fraud also saw some 28.45% increase from 116 cases in 2021 to 149 cases in 2022.
Apart from the top five, the only other type from fraud that also witnessed some increase was Burglary. It recorded 17.39% increase from 23 cases in 2021 to 27 cases in 2022.
Declines
But other types of fraud saw considerable levels of decline between 2021 and 2022.
For instance, forgery and manipulation of documents grew declined by 75.69% from 255 to 62; cheque fraud declined 71.68% from 113 to 32 and lending/credit fraud also grew 32.56% from 29 to 43 case.
But the fraud types that saw the biggest declines were ATM/POS fraud, which dropped by 91.51% from 106 to 9 cases over the period, while remittance fraud also saw some 95% decline from 20 cases in 2021 to just one case in 2022.
Institutions
Meanwhile the total number of institutions which reported frauded cases were 183 in 2022, compared to 182 in 2021.
Out of the total, 111 were Rural and Community Banks (same as the previous year), and 23 were commercial banks (same numbers as 2021).
Then there were some 34 microfinance companies, a slight increase from 29 in the year before; while the number of savings and loans companies as well as financial houses reduced slightly from 14 to 13 and from 5 to 2 respectively.
