St Casimirs Mortgage Minute

ABA: Fraud Losses Are Up - But Don't Blame Banks

A new report by the American Bankers Association (ABA) reveals that although financial losses related to fraud against bank deposit accounts rose 12 percent from 2012 to 2014, banks have made significant strides in fraud prevention efforts and are not to blame. According to Doug Johnson, senior vice president of payments and cybersecurity policy at the ABA, "We saw an increase in fraud losses in 2014, most likely due to the number of large-scale retailer data breaches, which resulted in a significant increase in attempted debit card fraud. Banks recognize that many customers are moving online to perform banking transactions and have invested billions of dollars to create very effective online fraud-prevention systems that include features like multifactor authentication and monitoring IP addresses." He says 66 percent of the financial losses were tied to debit compromises, while check fraud accounted for 32 percent of overall losses. Only 2 percent of the industry's overall fraud losses were related to online banking, wire, and Automated Clearing House transactions. According to Johnson, "Banks' sophisticated fraud-prevention systems and customer vigilance successfully stopped 85 percent of fraud attempts in 2014."

From "ABA: Fraud Losses Are Up - But Don't Blame Banks"
BankInfoSecurity.com (01/29/16) Kitten, Tracy