Wigwe Seeks Banks’ Collaboration to Tackle Fraud

The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Access Bank Plc, Mr. Herbert Wigwe has called for greater collaboration among deposit money banks in the country in order to tackle the rising incidence of fraud in the sector.

Wigwe stated this in an address presented at a stakeholders’ workshop anti-fraud and compliance tagged: “Combating fraud and money laundering –the need for collaboration amongst stakeholders,” organised by the bank in Lagos yesterday.

The workshop was part of events lined up to mark the bank’s compliance and anti-fraud awareness week.

According to the Access Bank boss, banking and financial services play a vital role in any economy.  They spawn growth, create investment opportunities, facilitate the creation of jobs and generally drive economies, he pointed out.

However, he stressed that the sector is susceptible to

abuse, noting that the banking sector can be used to launder illegal proceeds of criminal and terrorist organisations, serve as fraud and money laundering channel, particularly when the transactions are complex.

“These crimes have had adverse impact on our national development and particularly on the financial system, including reputational damage to the image of the country, loss of foreign direct investment, poor infrastructural development, dwindling confidence and distortions in our political as well as financial systems, amongst other things,” he added.

Wigwe noted that globally, punitive measures such as fines and sanctions had been meted out against financial institutions for failure to adhere to regulatory guidelines and non-compliance with standards as set by regulators.

The year 2012 saw leading banks in the spotlight, accused of negligently or willfully breaking anti-money laundering (AML) rules or international economic sanctions.

Standard Chartered Bank, accused of breaches of US sanction on Iran by the New York Department of Financial Services was forced to pay a $340 million settlement. HSBC, accused of overlooking money laundering from Mexico into the US, predicted in November that the total fines could be more than $1.5 billion, among others.

Furthermore, Wigwe described fraud as a global epidemic ravaging major banks internationally and locally which must also be wiped out completely. “We must all work together to develop effective compliance and anti-fraud policies satisfactory to regulators, which are absolutely necessary in order for banks to handle effectively the complexity of current financial transactions, regulatory framework, preventively manage compliance and fraud risk, and of course, handle effectively incidents of compliance failures and fraud cases,” he said.

He listed some of the steps to achieve this to include putting in place effective internal control mechanism to curtail the menace of e-fraud, sharing of information by stakeholders during fraud investigation, collaboration with international and local agencies to develop strategic responses to prevention, information sharing and conducting fraud awareness, training, among others.

Thisday