Fraud Scenario Prevalent in the Banking Sector: Experience of a Developing Country

Banks are the engines that drive the operations in financial sector, money markets and growth of economy. With growing banking industry in India, frauds in Banks are increasing and fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and ingenious. Shockingly, banking industry in India dubs rising fraud as "an inevitable cost of doing business." As part of study, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted in 2012-13 among 345 Bank employees "to know their perception towards bank frauds and evaluate factors that influence the degree of their compliance level." The study reveals, "there are poor employment practices and lack of effective employee training; usually over-burdened staff, weak internal control systems, and low compliance levels on the part of Bank Managers, Offices and Clerks. Although banks cannot be 100% secure against unknown threats, a certain level of preparedness can go a long way in countering fraud risk. Internal audit professionals should play an integral role in organization's fraud-fighting efforts. Some other promising steps are: educate customers about fraud prevention, make application of laws more stringent, leverage the power of data analysis technologies, follow fraud mitigation best practices, and employ multipoint scrutiny.