ABA Deposit Account Fraud Survey

With financial fraud on the rise, where does your bank stand in terms of losses, security, and other pressing issues—especially when challenged by the fraud potential of ID theft, account takeover, and technology-based delivery systems such as RDC and mobile apps?

The ABA Deposit Account Fraud Survey collects baseline information on check, debit card, and electronic payment fraud losses, and the actions taken by banks to reduce these losses. The survey examines the leading threats against deposit accounts, current and projected fraud losses, and other fraud-related topics both by overall industry trends and by bank asset size.

2019 Highlights

A few highlights of this year’s survey results:

Fraud against bank deposit accounts amounted to $25.1 billion in 2018, up from $19.1 billion in 2016, according to ABA estimates.
This amount includes $2.8 billion in losses to the industry and $22.3 billion in fraud prevention, i.e., fraudulent transactions that were stopped by banks’ prevention measures. The loss amount does not include the expense banks incurred during 2018 for prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of deposit account fraud.
In 2018, check fraud accounted for 47 percent or $1.3 billion of industry deposit account fraud losses, closely followed by debit card fraud losses—signature, PIN, and ATM combined—44 percent or $1.2 billion. The remaining 9 percent or $265 million of losses were attributable to electronic banking transactions, including billpay, P2P transfers, wire and ACH transactions.
Compared with the last survey results, industry fraud losses from debit cards decreased slightly/remained stable. However, losses increased for both check and electronic channels.
Survey respondents rated customer victimization scams (e.g., fake check scams, Internet job scams, lottery scams), phishing emails and business email compromise (BEC) schemes, social engineering (including recruitment of money mules via social media), elder financial abuse, and ATM/gas pump skimming as the leading risks to the industry and its customers in the next 12 months.