PTI New Delhi

Reserve Bank Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar on Friday said that the incidence of digital frauds has been rising since July this year. Speaking at a SBI event here, Sankar said that the frauds were going down till July and the Reserve Bank is checking reasons for the increase since then. "If you look at frauds per number of transactions, we would see that compared to last year, from the beginning of the year, that incidence (of frauds) kept on reducing substantially until about July when it again started rising up," he said.

Without sharing the degree of the increase, Sankar said the increase can either be cyclical or seasonal. He said that the digital infrastructure is being deployed by the regulator like the mule hunter which is designed to track down conduit accounts to flush out money received through frauds. As per the annual report for FY25, there was a decrease in frauds in FY25 to 23,953 from over 36,000 in the preceding financial year.

Frauds occurred predominantly in the category of digital payments including card and internet in terms of number. Private sector banks account for nearly 60 per cent of the fraud cases by numbers, while PSBs' share by value is over 71 per cent as of end-FY25, it said. ‘Not regulator's job to take decisions for bank boards’

Stressing that Indian banks are far more mature today than they were a decade ago, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said on Friday that the Central Bank does not aim to micromanage things, adding that no regulator should substitute for boardroom judgment and each case has to be looked at with merit by a regulated entity. He said regulators need to keep in mind the credit and deposits expansion, improved asset quality and profitability, along with surge in returns on assets and equity.