KPMG: „Fraud costs are increasing at a faster rate than fraud risk management spend. A radical rethink is urgently required.”

In the context of a changing global banking landscape, where branch networks are shrinking, volumes of digital payments are increasing and payments are being processed in seconds, fraudsters are creatively finding new ways to steal from banks and their customers.

The Global Banking Fraud Survey was conducted to obtain a global perspective of how banks are tackling internal and external fraud threats. Respondents were asked about trends in fraud typologies, challenges they are facing in mitigating threats, security in a digital age and how they are structuring their teams and deploying resources to optimize their fraud risk management efforts.

Key findings from the survey

• 1) Over half of survey respondents globally experienced increases in both external fraud total value and volume. Increasing fraud typologies globally from 2015 to 2018 include identity theft and account takeover, cyber-attack, card not present fraud and authorized push payments scams.

• 2) The largest proportion of respondents globally said that the total cost, average cost and volume of internal employee fraud detected stayed the same or decreased. This may not, however, present a true picture of the cost of internal fraud. Many external frauds originate with someone working inside the bank.

• 3) Over half of respondents recover less than 25 percent of fraud losses; demonstrating that fraud prevention is key. Banks are investing in new technologies towards fraud prevention.

• 4) In every region, banks surveyed considered the most significant challenge in fraud risk to be cyber-attacks.

• 5) Banks globally are seeing an increasing trend in scams. Fraudsters are manipulating and coercing customers into making payments to them, bypassing bank controls.

• 6) Customers are key in the prevention and detection of fraudulent activity on their accounts, particularly to reduce scam losses. More should be done to educate customers about fraud and scams.

• 7) Open Banking is considered a significant challenge in fraud risk by banks, with banks across the globe getting ready to open their doors to third parties to access their customer data.

Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and can quickly change and adapt their approaches. Banks need to be agile to respond to new threats and embrace new approaches and technologies to predict and prevent fraud.

KPMG’s Global Banking Survey was conducted between November 2018 and February 2019 across retail banks, 13 of which are in the Asia-Pacific, 5 in the Americas and 25 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. Eighteen have annual revenues in excess of USD 10 billion and 31 employ more than 10.000 people across the globe.

The survey questioned banking fraud risk, investigations and group security professionals on trends in fraud typologies, challenges banks are facing in mitigating internal and external threats in the period 2016-2018, security in a digital age and how banks are structuring their teams and deploying resources to optimize their fraud risk management efforts.

For more details download the KPMG report: Global Banking Fraud Survey (pdf format – 2.9 MB)