Access Compromised: How Access Bank Expensive Porous Financial Security Exposes Depositors to Scammers and Fraudsters

Access Compromised: How Access Bank Expensive, Porous Financial Security

The primary function of banks is to make sure the money deposited with them and the data of their customers’ are kept safe at all times. This is the reason the current situation in Access Bank, a bank that used to be one of the most reliable financial institutions in the country, is sad and pitiful. 

In the interim consolidated financial statement of June 30, 2023 of Herbert Wigwe led Holdings, it was recorded that Access Bank incurred a loss of N5. 46 billion to fraud  and forgery incidents, a situation that places the bank on top of the list of most risky banks to save your money. 

 

Findings shows the recorded loss were the money the owners were able to recover from the bank and this did not includ several billions whose owners were frustrated or bullied by the actions of Access Bank from recovering their money deposited from safe keeping with the bank that were somehow stolen. 

 

The statement which was released by the Bank’s newly formed parent company Access Holdings reports that the N20.85 trillion asset company has been doing a shoddy job in securing the savings of their many customers which is primarily the bank’s responsibility and has only been able to prevent a loss of mere N975 89 million out of N6.44 billion which means they can confirm depositors with Access Bank incurred N5.46 billion debt due to the bank’s porous cyber security despite the several billions being earmarked for that purpose in the bank’s annual budget. 

 

The report reveals the loss of N5.459 billion is as a result of fraudulent transfers, fraudulent withdrawals and reactivation of customers’ accounts, while N4.53 million loss was from cash theft, cash suppression, cash pilferage and dry posting.

 

If it would be recollected the bank was accused of practices that are not professional by Mr P of the singing duo of PSquare. The grouse of the musician is that the Bank and some other banks colluded with some individuals to use his name to perpetrate fraud on hapless Nigerians by allowing elements that are not him to use a combination of his stage and real names to open account to defraud the people. 

 

He also accused the bank of not making moves to curbing the fraud months after he had reported the actions of the scammers to the bank over the anomaly of allowing such account to operate without the BVN. 

 

It is important to note that the once proactive Access Bank seems to have been swimming in the deeps of banking security services for some times as there has been several incidents involving the bank that was at a time running the best secured online banking platform in the country to actions that has seen several depositors lose their life savings kept with the bank or use an account opened with the bank to steal.