Bank frauds may have started to dip now, but wait a bit before you cheer

The incidence of bank fraud is trending downward, but the broad picture hides many blind spots

The number of bank frauds in the first half of FY22 fell dramatically to Rs 36,342 crore, from Rs 64,261 crore in the year-ago period. Remarkable as this is, there is no getting away from the fact that the banking system saw “frauds of Rs 100 crore per day over the past seven years,” as Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply in March. 

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) Annual Report for 2020-21 notes that the average time lag between the date of occurrence of a fraud and