Bank frauds in the Covid-19 pandemic year fell by 25% in value terms to Rs 1.38 lakh crore, according to data provided by the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report.

In the year-ago fiscal ended 31 March 2020, frauds reported by banks stood at Rs 1.85 lakh crore.

The number of fraud cases also saw a fall. RBI data showed that the number of cases declined 15% year-on-year to 7,363in fiscal 2020-21.

The RBI data quoted here is in respect of frauds of Rs 1 lakh and above.

The share of total frauds fell in case of public sector banks (PSBs) while it rose in case of private banks. PSBs accounted for 59% of the total value of frauds at Rs 81,901 crore in FY21, down from 80% a year ago. Private sector banks, on the other hand, contributed 33% at Rs 46,335 crore in FY21, up from 18.4% a year ago.

While PSBs reported 2,903 fraud cases in FY21, private sector banks had 3,710 cases.

Foreign banks reported 521 frauds involving Rs 3,315 crore while the financial institutions saw 25 frauds involving Rs 6,839 crore.

A majority of the frauds were in the loan category, both in terms of value and number of cases. “Though the value of frauds reported in advances category for 2020-21, in percentage terms, remained almost same as compared to the last year, the incidence of frauds in advances category, in terms of number, has come down over the previous year,” RBI said in its annual report released on Thursday.

RBI data showed that 99% of the total frauds were from the advances category in value terms. The number of frauds in the online space rose 34.6% at the end of March 2021.

The share of the off-balance sheet (in terms of value) has been decreasing since 2018-19.

The average time lag between the date of occurrence of frauds and their detection by banks was 23 months during 2020-21. However, in respect of large frauds of Rs 100 crore and above the delay was longer, with an average lag of 57 months.

The RBI in its annual report said it would enhance the “fraud risk management system, including improving the efficacy of the early warning signal (EWS) framework, strengthening fraud governance and response system, augmenting data analysis for monitoring of transactions, introduction of a dedicated market intelligence (MI) unit for frauds and implementation of an automated unique system generated number for each fraud”.