South Africa’s battle against financial crime intensified in 2022, with a concerning uptick in ATM explosive attacks and digital fraud, according to the SA Banking Risk Information Centre’s Annual Crime Stats 2022 report.
SOUTH Africa’s battle against financial crime intensified in 2022, with a concerning uptick in ATM explosive attacks and digital fraud, according to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre’s (Sabric) Annual Crime Stats 2022 report.
Despite the activation of dye-stain technology, ATM explosive attacks rose by 23%. Disturbingly, criminals often succeeded in removing the stains from the cash.
However, there’s a silver lining: branch before deposit robberies (before deposits are about to be made at a branch) plummeted by 39% in 2022, largely due to the arrest of main suspects in KwaZulu-Natal, a hot-spot for such incidents.
Digital crime, particularly banking application fraud, witnessed a 36% spike. Fraudsters employed an array of tactics, from social engineering to exploiting data vulnerabilities.
The persistent menace of “vishing” – where scammers pose as bank officials to extract sensitive data – remains a significant threat.
While banking apps saw more incidents, online banking fraud recorded the highest average financial losses per incident, marking a 9% increase from 2021. Phishing and vishing were the primary methods used by criminals.
On the bright side, mobile banking fraud incidents decreased by 9%, with SIM swap incidents dropping from 87% in 2021 to 76% in 2022. This suggests that such tactics are losing their effectiveness.
Vehicle asset finance (VAF) fraudulent applications dipped by 17.6%, thanks to robust fraud detection systems by banks.
Card fraud, encompassing debit and credit, declined by 18.4%. Additionally, card-not-present (CNP) fraud, despite having the highest fraud values, saw fewer incidents in 2022.
