In addition, the bank is also taking measures to prevent collusion between the maker, checker, and branch manager of a single branch, along with external parties who somehow gained access to a debit instruction or cheque.
“To mitigate the risk of incidents of this nature, the Bank is establishing a centralised authorisation team that will independently authorise transactions, separate from the branch,” the spokesperson told ET. “This additional layer of oversight-combining branch-level checks with centralised authorisation-will help safeguard against the risk of collusion among branch staff.”
For individual customers, the bank will now require account holders to authorise cheque transactions through the bank’s mobile application after logging in before the cheque is cleared. The lender said these controls have already been implemented across all branches as an immediate step following the incident.
It added that all regions and branches are currently under review as part of an exercise to strengthen internal safeguards and transaction verification mechanisms.
“After this incident, all regions and branches are currently being reviewed. As an immediate step, the learning from the above incident has already been implemented across all the branches,” the IDFC First spokesperson told ET.
Meanwhile, IDFC First Bank has increased the payout linked to a fraud incident at its Chandigarh branch to ‘645 crore, ’55 crore higher than its earlier estimate of ‘590 crore, after receiving additional claims from affected customers.The bank clarified that the additional payout relates to claims stemming from the same incident previously disclosed and does not indicate any new fraud cases. The lender also said all claims are linked to the Chandigarh branch incident and that there are no other pending claims.
“We have not come across any additional irregularities during the ongoing checks,” the official said. “The bank has made the payment to the concerned clients in line with our principled approach of making good client dues. The bank will continue to pursue action against the perpetrators to recover our dues.”
Officials from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs are assisting the bank by facilitating a formal complaint through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, identifying suspected beneficiaries and initiating lien marking on accounts.
The Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh filed a complaint alleging that fake FD receipts worth ‘116.84 crore were issued by an IDFC First Bank manager in connection with funds transferred from Chandigarh Smart City Ltd to the civic body.