KAMPALA, UGANDA: Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited on Wednesday confirmed it had countered fraudulent activity by a few of its banking agents aimed at defrauding the bank through a process flow error that affected some third- party agent banking transactions.
‘‘Stanbic Bank Uganda has countered fraudulent activity by a few of its banking agents aimed at defrauding the bank through a process flow error that affected some third-party agent banking transactions,’’ reads part of the statement released by the bank on Wednesday, September 1.
‘‘The incident did not affect customer transactions or balances and agency banking services continue to operate normally. Effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences,’’ the bank added.
According to Stanbic, efforts have been undertaken together with security agencies to recover funds from the various agents implicated in the fraud activity, although the firm declined to mention how many of its agents were involved.
“In liaison with law enforcement, the bank is undertaking measures aimed at recovering from the implicated agents who sought to benefit from the error by retaining funds that should have been remitted to the bank.”
The bank added that effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future ocurrences of any such incidents.
Several cases of cybercrime have recently been reported and related to the ‘Agents’ banking model across the country.
About Agent Banking
The agent banking model adoped by the Stanbic Bank three years ago is a sustainable strategy aimed at contributing to Uganda’s effort of deepening financial inclusion among Ugandans. To date, Stanbic Bank has a network of over 3500 agents accounting for nearly 30% of the bank’s total transactions.
The model has proven to be beneficial in many ways including providing business opportunities to qualifying Ugandans, job creation in form of agent tellers, taking banking services nearer to customers while reducing on traffic within branches and promoting inter-bank and telecom interoperability.
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