86% of APAC bank leaders flag AI agents as top fraud risk

Nearly half lose over $10m to fraud every year.

Over 8 in 10 or 86% of bank leaders across five markets in Asia Pacific said that artificial intelligence (AI) agents could be the next largest exploitable vulnerability in the next year.

In a survey of 340 leaders across banks in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Australia, 86% said that AI has increased the sophistication of fraud and scams, said BioCatch, a fraud prevention company.

Nearly half, or 49% of the respondents said that their institution loses more than $10m to fraud every year, 22% over $25m, 8% more than $50m, and 2% more than $100m.

Over 3 in 4 of the respondents or 78% believe it will be very challenging to distinguish legitimate AI-assisted actions from malicious and manipulated content.

About 81% of APAC respondents say fraud attempts at their institution are increasing, and 78% said that fraud losses are increasing.

The leaders fulfill fraud-management, anti-money laundering (AML) and risk and compliance functions. They are all manager-level or above, with 76% at director level and 38% in their bank’s C-Suite, BioCatch said.