Demographic factors associated with employee fraud in South African retail banks

Abstract

The banking industry is prone to fraud committed by employees. According to South African banking trade union, SASBO, employee fraud includes misap-propriating deposits; colluding with external criminals; misusing own bank ac-counts; making fictitious deposits; granting unauthorised credit facilities to family; and falsifying bank records (SASBO News “Catch those crooks”, 2001) The purpose of this project report is to provide insights to the researcher’s employer, a South African Retail bank, to enable the bank to develop strate-gies to combat fraud committed by employees. Qualitative research was used to identify the broad factors contributing to employee fraud. Thereafter, quan-titative analysis was used to test the relationships between available demo-graphic data. The results showed that two of the three factors analysed, namely employee race and garnishee orders against them appear to be associated with em-ployee fraud. Gender did not appear to be associated with employee fraud.