United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Africa’s Global Bank, hosted a high-level panel session as part of activities to mark its annual Fraud Awareness Week with the theme: “Combating Fraud Risk and Cyber Theft in Digital Banking.”
The hybrid session, which was hosted at the UBA Head Office in Lagos last Friday, was well attended by regulators, experts and professionals as well as stakeholders from the financial services and cybersecurity sectors, part of the Bank’s week-long event to synthesise and create awareness among various stakeholders .
Welcoming the panellists and the participants to the event, Oliver Alawuba, group managing director/chief executive officer, UBA, noted that the event remained one of Africa’s biggest and most influential anti-fraud campaign.
He said: “Over the past few years, we have reinforced a simple truth: fraud prevention is not an event; it is a culture and a collective responsibility; and what began in 2023 as a visionary initiative of the UBA team has now grown into a continent-wide movement, one that strengthens trust, protects customers, and fortifies the integrity of digital banking across Africa.”
He added that the week-long anti-fraud campaign culminated in deepening capacity to detect, deter, and defeat fraud at every customer touchpoint.
Godwin Oyedokun, multi-talented and multidisciplinary scholar-practitioner, who gave the keynote speech, said because fraud can never be accidental in nature, and is always pre-planned, it is important to look at technology as a solution, where emphasis should move from a reactionary level to a predictive level.
“We need to focus on strategic imperative that will shift us from detection to prevention, so do not allow fraudulent activities to beat your processes.
Make fraudulent activities less attractive. When you prevent, no matter how much you spend on it, it is still better than spending money to detect and restore,” Oyedokun stated.
Earlier in his address, Kayode Ajayi, group chief internal auditor, UBA, who pointed out that the fight against fraud is a progressive fight, highlighted the bank’s proactive approach to fraud prevention, including continuous system upgrades, artificial intelligence-driven transaction monitoring, and round-the-clock cybersecurity surveillance across its African and global operations.
