Fighting fraud in the digital banking age

Cybercriminals are exploiting new weaknesses, with digital document forgeries up 244% year-over-year.

This era of digital banking has brought an exponential rise in real-time banking payment solutions that are built around non-face-to-face interactions.

The surge in digital payments, together with rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and a parallel cryptocurrency boom, has created new opportunities for criminal organisations to commit fraud at an unprecedented scale.

Globally, consumers are becoming increasingly vulnerable. A recent study of 42 markets found that seven in ten adults have encountered a scam in the last 12 months, whilst almost a quarter of adults claim to have had money stolen by scammers in the last year, with 13% encountering a scam at least once a day.

Cybercriminals are also exploiting new weaknesses, with digital document forgeries up 244% year-over-year, and deepfakes used in 40% of biometric fraud cases in 2024.

Tackling lending fraud as forgeries rise
The biggest challenge for banks today lies in balancing frictionless, straight-through digital experiences and robust fraud prevention. We enhance our fraud risk management framework by integrating fraud analytics, AI-based identity verification and behavioural biometrics. We use automated document verification, device intelligence, geolocation analysis and machine learning to detect anomalies.

By embedding proactive, intelligence-led defences across the lending lifecycle, banks can mitigate risk exposure while reinforcing trust, operational resilience, and regulatory compliance. The next frontier in digital lending fraud management is convergence.

How do we integrate fraud, credit risk, and compliance analytics into unified decisioning systems? To that end, we are investing in AI-enabled tools for document forensics, customer risk scoring, and agentic AI investigation to elevate fraud detection accuracy and speed.

Emerging threats in digital payments and the future of prevention 
Fraud evolves relentlessly – with new typologies emerging faster, smarter, borderless and more sophisticated, therefore, our defences must evolve even faster. Cyber criminals have transformed the payment fraud landscape at an industrial scale by stealing client credentials, creating synthetic identities, digitally skimming payment information and manipulating transaction messages.

Clients, sometimes driven by fear, anxiety or greed, are deceived into sending money to criminal-controlled accounts, later converted into cryptocurrencies, making the fund-tracing process highly complex.

Today, organised fraud networks combine these tactics with social engineering to penetrate defences once thought secure, by circumventing authentication controls exposing customers, merchants, networks and banks.

Regulators globally are now demanding financial institutions protect clients by implementing advanced authentication, real-time transaction monitoring, fraud surveillance systems, such as in-app transaction controls and kill switches. The global cost of fraud, projected in the tens of billions, is growing not just through direct losses, but also on recovery efforts, dispute resolution, compliance and reputational damage.

Collaboration with players in this ecosystem is key. In Singapore, we work with other banks to reduce fraud risk by maintaining a list of known ‘bad devices’ and actively participate in anti-fraud initiatives led by the Singapore Police Force. By integrating behavioural insights, device telemetry and adaptive analytics, we aim to stay ahead of evolving fraud tactics and ensure robust protection for our clients.

Education is key for fraud prevention
There is no substitute for consumer education. By helping clients stay informed about evolving fraud typologies, banks can significantly reduce the risk of financial loss. That is why we place strong emphasis on client awareness and education and continuously drive dynamic and topical awareness campaigns across our markets.

Whilst fraud affects individuals of all ages, criminals are increasingly targeting vulnerable groups, particularly older adults, through deceptive tactics like impersonation scams.

As such, we regularly run community campaigns in Singapore and Hong Kong that are tailored for elderly clients to educate them on typical frauds and safeguarding measures. These programmes focus on practical steps to recognise warning signs, verify information securely, and maintain confidence in managing their finances safely.

Preparing for the future
As one of the industry’s forward-looking players, we are evolving from tactical containment to strategic readiness - embedding fraud prevention at the core of digital payment frameworks. This transformation harnesses advanced analytics, cross-industry intelligence, AI-driven decision engines, and emerging quantum computing techniques to anticipate and prevent attacks before they even occur.

The future of fraud management will not be shaped by technology alone, but an ecosystem approach that unites innovation, regulation, and human insight creating an evolving shield of trust. Through this approach, we remain committed to safeguarding integrity and confidence in the global banking system.