Is Your Bank Losing Money To Fraud? The 5 Worst-Hit Nigerian Banks

Is your bank quietly bleeding from fraud? You might want to check the balance sheet. In the first half of 2025 alone, fraud cost Nigeria’s top commercial banks billions in naira and the biggest victims weren’t small players.

Digital trickery, forged instruments, and phantom account reactivations hit hard, even as banks funnelled record sums into cybersecurity. The Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) reports that industry-wide fraud losses jumped 602.98% to NGN 3.29 B in Q1 2025.

Access Bank, the country’s largest by assets, saw fraud losses more than triple. GTBank’s hit rose 42%. And even UBA, typically tight-lipped, logged nearly NGN 300 M in stolen funds. Such a rising scale of theft raises questions about trust, oversight, and whether today’s security spend is actually outsmarting tomorrow’s fraudsters.

Here are the five Nigerian commercial banks that were worst-hit by fraud in H1 2025, ranked by total actual losses, and backed by filings, financials, and forensic footnotes.

1. Access Bank – NGN 1.64 B lost

Access Bank, Nigeria’s largest bank by assets, reported the country’s highest fraud losses in H1 2025. Its parent, Access Holdings, disclosed an actual loss of NGN 1.64 B (USD 1.13 M) from fraud between January and June 2025.

The bulk came from forged instruments (checks and documents) totalling NGN 831.96 M, with the balance from fraudulent transfers, withdrawals and account reactivations. In context, this was a 254% jump from NGN 464.12 M in H1 2024. (This was still just ~0.76% of Access’s NGN 215.92 B profit for the period.)

Notably, Access has been pouring money into IT, spending NGN 193.5 B on technology in 2024 alone, but fraudsters appear to be getting more sophisticated. As FITC notes, Nigerian fraud is shifting “from frequent small-value hits to targeted, high-impact operations.”

2. Zenith Bank – historic losses

Zenith Bank’s financial reports for H1 2025 mention impairment losses on loans as a major cost driver, but do not explicitly detail the specific amount lost to fraud for that period in the publicly available summaries. But recent reports show it has suffered crippling fraud losses.

In full-year 2024, Zenith saw fraud-related losses soar 14-fold to NGN 5.26 B (from NGN 383.4 M in 2023), the highest of any Nigerian bank.

This suggests a continuing risk in 2025; even if H1 2025 data aren’t out, Zenith woud be expected to rank among the worst-hit banks. (For comparison, other lenders with large historic fraud losses include Fidelity Bank, which lost NGN 2.094 B to fraud in 2023.)

3. UBA – NGN 288 M lost

United Bank for Africa (UBA) reported a NGN 288 M fraud loss in H1 2025, down 45.4% from NGN 527.0 M a year earlier.

UBA’s half-year results attribute most attempts to electronic channels, though, thanks to stronger controls, only 12% of the NGN 2.401 B in attempted fraud translated into losses. For example, losses on card and online transactions fell sharply (electronic fraud dropped from NGN 229.1 M in H1 2024 to NGN 99 M in H1 2025.

UBA’s heavy tech spending (around NGN 48 B in 2024) appears to be paying off, even as attempted scams continue. Still, its NGN 288 M loss (about USD 198.8 K) makes UBA one of the top five fraud victims.

4. GTBank (GTCO) – NGN 225.42 M lost

Guaranty Trust Bank (part of GTCO Plc) reported a NGN 225.42 M fraud loss for H1 2025. This represented a 41.7% increase year-on-year, but the rise was driven largely by a one-off refund in a prior case (from an insurer, AXA Mansard).

In reality, GTBank’s ongoing fraud losses were much smaller: without the refunded NGN 177.29 M, its net losses would have been closer to NGN 48 M. Still, GTBank joins the top 5. Its disclosures emphasise that losses from fake transfers, withdrawals and the like remain a concern. (Notably, a separate report found GTBank’s full-year 2024 fraud losses actually fell, bucking the trend.)

5. Fidelity Bank – NGN 2.094 B (historic losses)

Fidelity Bank’s H1 2025 figures have not been published yet, but it has already shown how serious fraud can be. In 2023, Fidelity disclosed NGN 2.094 B in fraud losses, far above most peers. This came from over 3,000 fraud/forgery cases, underscoring that even mid-tier lenders are not immune.

Fidelity’s 2023 losses put it among the largest fraud “victims” on record. (Wema Bank was another example: it lost NGN 685.6 M to fraud in 2023.)