Access Bank, a popular Nigerian banking institution, decided to invest a whopping ₦193.5 billion in technology to combat financial fraud. This move was highly praised in the industry as the largest IT expenditure in the country’s banking sector in 2024. However, despite this massive investment, Access Holdings Plc, the parent company of Access Bank, is still struggling to deal with cybercrime and fraudulent activities on its digital platforms.
In 2024, Access Bank reported a staggering 11,410 successful fraud incidents, resulting in a financial loss of ₦3.5 billion. Although this amount was lower than the ₦8.6 billion lost in 2023, the significant increase in successful fraud attempts from 6,634 in the previous year raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of the bank’s fraud prevention systems. Security analysts argue that criminals may be outsmarting the bank’s defenses, despite the hefty investment in cybersecurity infrastructure.
The Acting Group Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings Plc, Bolaji Agbede, believes that their investment has yielded positive results by reducing overall fraud losses. However, industry experts highlight that relying solely on technology may not be enough to address insider threats, employee errors, and customer education gaps. As digital fraud continues to rise in Nigeria, there is a growing consensus that banks need to broaden their anti-fraud strategies beyond IT solutions to include regulatory compliance, staff training, customer awareness, and better threat intelligence capabilities. This situation at Access Bank underscores the vulnerability of the banking sector to evolving digital threats, raising concerns about the true security of customers despite advanced technological measures.
