Experian India on Wednesday launched the ‘Fraud Report 2016’, its first report on fraud trends in the banking and financial services industry in India.

Mohan Jayaraman, Managing Director, said that identity theft accounted for 77 per cent of fraud cases in the first quarter of 2015. Consumer loans, credit cards, auto loans, mortgage loans and personal loans (in that order) have seen the largest number of fraud cases.

The mortgage portfolio has witnessed a 50 per cent increase in fraud incidence rate. The report said the proportion of detected fraud cases for mortgages had increased to 73 cases per 10,000 applications in Q1 2015, compared to 48 frauds per 10,000 applications in Q1 2014. The report noted that falsification of address proof is the most popular behaviour seen amongst fraudsters, while hiding of adverse credit is most common in the automotive loan category.

Jayaraman said, “With the rise of social media and information shared in the public, identity fraud continues to be a threat to the industry. There are several components of fraud — accessing data (hacking), creating fake documentation (identify theft), account takeover (purchasing goods illegally) and distribution (sale of goods or data on the black market). Hence, it is important for us to think of fraud as an industry.”

Experian’s fraud detection services application called Hunter had helped the financial services industry save ₹1,173 crore in FY15, Jayaraman said. The savings in the current fiscal stand at around ₹2,200 crore, he said.

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