The financial sector in the Kingdom is one of the least susceptible bodies to financial fraud worldwide, according to Talat Zaki Hafiz, secretary-general of the media and banking awareness committee of the Saudi banks, the apex banking body in the Kingdom.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday to launch the eighth banking awareness campaign by Saudi banks, Hafiz said, “Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that is least vulnerable to financial fraud due to the high levels of awareness of Saudi customers and the highly effective approach of the Saudi banks in fighting this phenomenon.”

“By tightening the monitoring and security measures on transactions, it ensured over the years that its banking systems are completely malpractice free,” he added.

Thus compared to the overall volume of banking transactions conducted by customers through its banks, the average fraudulent operations, both successful and aborted in 2014-2015 did not exceed 3,117 transactions, he revealed, adding that annual losses resulting from financial fraud worldwide is somewhere between 2.5 percent to 5 percent, or an astounding amount of $3.5 trillion of total global trade.

Hafiz further pointed that in line with the rapid development of electronic banking, online financial transactions and social media platforms, Saudi banks spare no efforts in creating proper preventive and protective measures, and awareness strategies to avoid financial fraud.

These include detecting signs of fraud and raising red flags for probable or ongoing financial deceptions, as well as adopting integrated plans and policies to adopt robust monitoring systems to fight financial scams, he added.

When asked about how do they rate their success and if there is no bias, he said, “a neutral agency evaluates the campaign and not our people writing the success story.”

As the theme of this campaign says “Do not disclose it,” he advised that personal information and banking records are very confidential, so they should be protected and must not be shared with strangers in order to avoid becoming victim to any financial fraud.

Speaking to Arab News after the conference on the Kingdom switching to the Gregorian calendar, about whether simultaneous salary disbursement by both the government and private sectors at the month’s end will create any problem of cash flow for the banks, he exuded confidence saying banks are ready for whatever decision is taken by the government, there will be no problem as banks have enough cash to deal with it.

Speaking on the occasion Mohammed Al-Yami, a spokesman of the Saudi banks, said the campaign into the successive years aims to foster awareness among common people to ensure fraudulence is avoided at the best, and it does not necessarily mean that local banks are facing hacking attempts or that the financial sector in the Kingdom is going through a financial fraud episode.

As online financial fraud is on rise worldwide, such large scale customer awareness campaigns help avoid the risks of falling victim to deceptive activities.

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