Fraud and Money Laundering prevention strategist, Richard Kumadoe has urged banks and other financial institutions to efficiently prevent criminals from using their facilities to perpetrate fraud.

“Combating these financial crimes and fraud is a perpetual battle with criminals leveraging the latest technology and strategies to circumvent the defences of financial institutions and the state.”

Mr. Kumadoe, who is the Executive Director of Quest Services Ltd, a due diligence & risk management center, told CITY & BUSINESS GUIDE last week after an anti-fraud workshop for bankers that the ongoing coverage of financial crime in Ghana indicates that the fraud landscape continues to evolve.

“Those tasked with fraud detection and prevention must keep pace with the modern trends, yet many of our institutions and investigators rely on legacy platforms that cannot handle today’s volume and complexity of fraudulent activity and as a result, fraud is everywhere and virtually every entity suffers from it resulting in the state and its allied institutions losing millions yearly,” he said.

He said that “anti-fraud teams need the capability to connect the vast quantities of available structured and unstructured data in a way that allows them to rapidly identify and prioritize fraudulent activity for investigation as prevention and detection is much more effective and valuable than trying to recover losses after the act.”

He said “the state and institutions must take immediate plans and implement proactive strategies in finding new ways to fight the fraud menace,” which he termed as “Real-Time Fraud Detection Techniques.

“Our country and institutions have been engulfed with financial crime and fraud to the dismay of many. Recent trends have shown how the state has lost millions of the taxpayers’ money in corrupt practices in GYEEDA at the time when the state needs so much money to fix the economy.”

“Not only that but also our financial institutions cannot be spared either, fraud everywhere, mostly covered and concealed from the general public’s eyes for fear of losing their reputation and customers dissatisfaction of how much of their hard earned savings have been lost through fraudulent activities as a result of negligent practices by those who are suppose to know better in charge of these institutions and their functional units.”

“Sharing information and assisting law enforcement in investigations are some of the ways to detect, identify, prevent and analyse the impact of myriad fraud schemes.” “We must all accept our distinct roles and responsibilities when it comes to fraud prevention in order to save our beloved country and combat financial crime from Corporate Ghana.”