Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT REPORTER | Stanbic Bank Uganda has countered fraudulent activity by a few of its banking agents aimed at defrauding the bank.
The bank was quick to add that the incident did not affect customer transactions or balances and that agency banking services continue to operate normally.
Some banking agents aimed at defrauding the bank through a process flow error that affected some third-party agent banking transactions, it said in a notice dated Sept 01.
The bank said, effective operational safeguards are in place to prevent future recurrences.
In liaison with law enforcement, the statement reads in part, the bank is undertaking measures aimed at recovering from the implicated agents who sought to benefit from the error by retaining funds that should have been remitted to the bank.
Stanbic Bank embarked on the agent banking model three years ago, as a sustainable strategy to contribute to Uganda’s effort of deepening financial inclusion among Ugandans.
To date, it has a network of over 3,500 agents accounting for nearly 30% of its total transactions.
The incident comes at a time when industry data indicates that, cumulatively, banks have, in the last three years, processed 4.6 million transactions valued at Shs5.14trillion via the agent banking platform.