By PETER EGWUATU

Following the rising incidents of Electronic Fraud (e-Fraud) in the financial sector of the economy, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Bank Limited, Mallam Ahmed Kuru, has called on banks to establish anti-fraud departments as a way of curbing the menace.

Delivering a keynote address titled “When All Goes Wrong: Mediation and Arbitration Best Practices,” at the just concluded August 2014 meeting of the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) in Lagos, Kuru who was represented by Mr. Chuks Ekpunobi, the bank’s Head, Strategy & Corporate Transformation said this was also the time for banks to collaborate to eradicate e-Fraud, which he also described as a “common enemy.”

He said statistics provided by the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) was frightening because it showed that electronic fraud has been in an upward trend since 2010. He said this is worrisome because the increase is both in terms of the number, volume and sophistication that are driven by high powered technology.

Unfortunately, however, he argued that bankers, auditors and internal control officials of financial institutions may 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 that would always be ahead of the fraudsters in every sense of the word.

According to him every financial institution should take the issue seriously because this year alone, the industry has lost about N2 billion to electronic fraud from the first and second quarter.

Should this trend continue, about N5 billion would be the estimated loss by the end of 2014. If this is not checked, the trend will lead to unbearable levels of capital erosion in the system.