{"id":74643,"date":"2024-06-01T18:38:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=74643"},"modified":"2024-06-01T18:41:15","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:41:15","slug":"equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends","title":{"rendered":"Equity Bank moves to tie up loose ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Uganda. <\/strong><\/span>Equity Group is looking for personnel with anti-fraud experience to stop the fraud that has been reducing its deposits while damaging its brand\u2019s reputation.<\/b><\/p>\n

Barely a month after losing billions of shillings to scammers in Kenya, the banking corporation is hiring elite fraud busters as it ramps up its efforts against fraud that has forced trust out of a section of its customers.<\/p>\n

The lender is strengthening its internal controls by hiring at least six new key personnel to bolster its fraud detection and prevention team. It has already secured personnel from Kenya\u2019s central bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).<\/p>\n

In an investor briefing, James Mwagi, the managing director and chief executive officer of Equity Group, stated that maintaining internal control and risk management is critical to the development of any brand, but particularly in the delicate banking and financial industry.<\/p>\n

In an apparent attempt to help it in negotiations, the Group\u2019s Ugandan subsidiary saw Kenneth Onyango, its executive director for commercial banking, arrested by the Ugandan police in connection with a stock loan and agent float financing scam. The bank reportedly lost over Shs62 billion as a result, with the majority of the funds being disbursed as unsecured loans to unqualified employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have realised that it\u2019s one thing to reach the top and it\u2019s another one to remain at the very top. And we have realised that Equity Group has on one hand become one of the strongest financial brands in the country, but we don\u2019t believe our operations are on that level. We don\u2019t believe our risk control environment is on that level,\u201d Mr Mwagi told the company\u2019s shareholders.<\/p>\n

Cleaning up<\/b><\/p>\n

This is why the organisation has already brought on board a senior manager for security governance and technical government, two group senior fraud managers, and a senior manager for fraud risk management. Together, they are expected to collaborate with the director of fraud risk management to identify and address relevant risks in the bank\u2019s operations. These two positions have never existed before in the Group, which Mr Mwagi now says are aimed to \u201censure the company\u2019s internal control management.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything small that happens hurts the reputation of the brand,\u201d he noted, \u201cso the goal is to align the group\u2019s risk control with the lender\u2019s growing size.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only in Uganda that the company has been exposed to loss of cash, but in Kenya as well.<\/p>\n

The bank suffered theft of Shs7.5 billion in Kenya in the middle of last month from 551 account holders who had received money from allegedly an Equity Bank\u2019s staff and used the money for transactions on a regular basis over a period of seven days. The bank\u2019s incoming MasterCard general ledger was the source of an increase in transactions that the company\u2019s risk management team discovered. These transactions were regularly paid out of MasterCard to 551 accounts before being transferred to 11 banks and multiple M-pesa accounts, reports from Kenyan media show.<\/p>\n

Not an outlier<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not the first fraud of this kind that is happening to banks. I&M Bank\u2019s Rwanda division revealed a loss of $10.3 million (Shs40 billion) in less than three months due to fraudulent customer withdrawals last year. The sum was lost between November 1 and January 17, 2022, and exceeds the $7.6 million (Shs28.8 billion) net profit that I&M Group made from the Rwandan market in the fiscal year that ended in December 2022.<\/p>\n

I&M Group said that some of the fraudulent withdrawals were recovered. I&M Group partnered with I&M Bank Rwanda and received MasterCard multi-currency cards, which had the capacity to store up to 17 different currencies. However, it is precisely this section that fraudsters exploited to conduct numerous currency exchanges on the MasterCard network within the card\u2019s sub-wallets, for example, from AED to EUR and back again, yielding a profit margin of 10 percent.<\/p>\n

Equity Group hopes to avert some of these situations by appointing a senior fraud manager for payments as well as another senior fraud manager for investments and insurance. Additional roles such as vendor management officer, enterprise resource planning support analyst, awareness analyst, and product security architect for commercial, fintech, and digital initiatives are also being considered by the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an imbalance seen by our customers being social engineers, then losing money. We have told [our new recruits] that they must find a solution. We have to balance our reputation with our internal control management,\u201d Mr Mwagi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are making sure that internal control comes to standards, operations also come to global standards, same with commercial. We can\u2019t be in the Kings\u2019 room and then slide,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Based on the information in this paper, the company appears to have approximately 15 open positions for people who are enthusiastic about using their experience to advance digital innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and support the expansion of Equity Group.<\/p>\n

Once bitten, twice shy<\/b><\/p>\n

The lender received applications for new positions up to this past workweek. The senior fraud manager for the group will oversee the evaluation of fraud risk assessments for both new and current credit products and services. They will also make sure anti-fraud controls are assessed as part of the risk and control self-assessments conducted by the lending business and operation units. Additionally, they would have to carry out risk assessments for credit fraud, applying a risk-based methodology to companies, goods, procedures, and systems in order to spot new fraud trends, weak points, and opportunities for development.<\/p>\n

This would necessitate them working together with heads of risk at the subsidiary companies to develop thorough strategies for managing credit fraud risk that are in line with the organisation\u2019s enterprise risk management framework.<\/p>\n

Some of the job\u2019s descriptions require them to \u201cmonitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for credit fraud, analysing trends and their impact on the business, while measuring the effectiveness of fraud prevention and detection controls.\u201d However, in order to qualify for this, they would need to have a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Information Technology, accounting, business administration, or risk management in addition to more than seven years of experience working in the financial services industry, with at least five of those years spent managing, preventing, detecting, or investigating fraud risk.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Uganda<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Uganda. Equity Group is looking for personnel with anti-fraud experience to stop the fraud that has been reducing its deposits while damaging its brand\u2019s reputation. Barely a month after losing billions of shillings to scammers in Kenya, the banking corporation is hiring elite fraud busters as it ramps up its efforts against fraud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":74641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-74643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"\nEquity Bank moves to tie up loose ends - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Equity Group is looking for personnel with anti-fraud experience to stop the fraud that has been reducing its deposit ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Equity Bank moves to tie up loose ends\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Equity Group is looking for personnel with anti-fraud experience to stop the fraud that has been reducing its deposit ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Uganda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-06-01T18:38:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-06-01T18:41:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2024\/06\/sm_1717254366.350188.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Equity Bank moves to tie up loose ends\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-06-01T18:38:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-06-01T18:41:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\"},\"wordCount\":1071,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2024\/06\/sm_1717254366.350188.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Uganda\",\"uganda\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"policy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/equity-bank-moves-to-tie-up-loose-ends\",\"name\":\"Equity Bank moves to tie up loose ends - 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