Banks have become alert as the number of fake accounts and frauds has increased in the last nine months

New Delhi: The increasing number of fake accounts in the last six-nine months has alerted commercial banks. Now control measures have been increased on new current and savings account customers and monitoring of old customers' accounts has been increased. In such a fake account, someone else in place of the account holder withdraws money by demanding it. Thus, illegal money transactions take place through that account.

Earlier this month, while interacting with managing directors and CEOs of public and private sector banks, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das asked banks to increase precautionary efforts against such accounts and directed them to accelerate consumer awareness and education initiatives and take other measures to curb digital fraud.

According to liability business executives, 0.5 to 1 per cent of newly opened accounts are fake accounts, forcing them to strengthen control mechanisms and assign new customers to senior branch staff.

According to RBI data, 551 fraud cases related to deposit accounts were reported in the financial year 2022-23, but 606 such cases were reported in the first six months of 2023-24 alone. A senior official of a private sector bank said, the case of such accounts came to light at the beginning of the financial year 2023-24, but their number was not worrying.

Such accounts are used for illegal capital transactions from someone else's account. By the third and fourth quarters, such accounts began to appear across the industry. Most of these transactions were done through digital means.

The number of such accounts has started reaching 0.5 percent of the newly opened accounts and in some banks it is 1 percent or even more. Due to this, banks have started working on strategies like increasing monitoring and amending the standard operating rules for opening accounts.