To address cyber fraud, new bank manual to be in place by April 1

As the government pushes for an expanded digital economy, a new manual aiming to address frauds in cyber and online banking is set to be in place by April 1.

The thrust will be on continuous tracking of sources of funds transferred online to rule out money laundering.

Besides multiple and not so routine transactions made online within and outside the country will also be monitored. Banks would also need to go through the accounts registering sudden jumps in heavy cash receipts. A mechanism facilitating centralized monitoring of all bank accounts could also be launched.

The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has already circulated the draft manual to banks and other stakeholders for their comments. The guideline will be put in place by the next financial year.

“The draft manual is ready, we have also circulated it, we will finalise it and launch by April 1,” TM Bhasin, vigilance commissioner, CVC told Hindustan Times.

“As we move towards a more digitized economy and electronic banking mode, we need to update our manual keeping in mind the changing dynamics, the manual that we have today does not even exit in the electronic form, so once we finalise the manual, we will circulate the same to all banks and ask them,” Bhasin added.

In October, 2016, a few State Bank of India debit card holders complained to their bank of data breach. Between April 2011 to September 2014 (the latest for which data is available) banks have reported a total of 27,614 credit-card related frauds and another 3835 debit-card related deceptions.

Besides, in 2015, Bank of Baroda came under the scanner for a Rs 6000 crore foreign exchange scam, which too was conducted primarily through electronic transactions.

Online and net banking in India, while convenient, has led to a surge in frauds. According to the Reserve Bank of India data, banks incurred a loss of more than Rs 12,000 crore in 2014-15 on account of such frauds, compared to a loss of Rs 7,542 crore in the previous fiscal. Banks are required to submit their respective data on frauds annually to the RBI.