Rise in document fraud a concern for intermediaries
In a country under siege from capital crimes like murder and rape, one quickly forgets about the billions of rand lost each year to fraud and other financial scams. The 2025 South African Fraud Prevention Services (SAFPS) International Fraud Summit offered some sobering insights into the state of financial crime in South Africa. For brokers and financial advisers, the message is clear: Fraud risks are rising, fraud tactics are evolving, and vigilance has never been more important.
Shifts in financial fraud
The SAFPS is a non-profit organisation that maintains a national fraud database. Its primary mandate is to fight financial crime through data-sharing and fraud detection tools made available to member organisations such as asset finance firms, banks, insurers, lenders, and retailers, to name a few. It has tracked trends in document fraud, impersonation, money mule accounts, and other fraudulent practices for over two decades.
Roy Retief, Head of Operations at SAFPS, was on hand at the two-day-long conference to present highlights from the organisation’s 2024 Annual Report. He noted important shifts that financial decision makers, including intermediaries, need to be cognisant of. To begin, he said that the SAFPS fraud listings database had grown by 26% in 2024 compared to 2023. This database comprises fraud listings contributed by the organisation’s members.
Most of the new listings came from banks (63%), retailers (12%), and micro finance firms (11%), but contributions from the insurance sector, a more recent member, are accelerating fast. According to Retief, there has been significant growth in insurers’ participation both in submitting fraud listings and their usage of the database. As insurers contribute more data and increase their search volumes, the quality of detection and prevention improves for all SAFPS members.
FSPs exposed to fraud…
Quoted in a media release issued to coincide with the conference, the SAFPS described the prevailing fraud landscape as “very concerning”, with both local and global trends pointing to an emboldened criminal ecosystem taking full advantage of technology. “Law enforcement officials face an uphill battle in addressing this risk landscape; it is essential to address these issues at industry gatherings like the SAFPS International Fraud Summit,” Retief said.
Brokers and financial advisers are often the first line of defence when fraudsters target financial product suppliers, especially when those attacks seek to compromise clients’ investments or policy payouts. Understanding emerging fraud typologies is therefore critical. One area worth exploring is the ‘misuse of account through fraudulent conduct’ which made up 46% of 2024 fraud listings. These cases often involve legitimate bank accounts being used to launder criminal proceeds or facilitate scams. “We have seen bank accounts opened solely to channel proceeds of crime, including from romance and investment scams,” Retief said.
Fraud listings involving money mule accounts declined by 33% in 2024 compared to the prior year but remain a significant threat. Money mule accounts involve individuals allowing their bank accounts to be used for illicit funds transfers. And data from Australia and the United Kingdom links money mule accounts to larger organised crime networks engaged in everything from human trafficking to terror financing.
The 2024 Annual Report revealed a 12% rise in its ‘victim of impersonation’ fraud listings. These cases involve individuals whose identities have been fraudulently used to secure goods or credit. In this scenario, a client with an otherwise clean credit record may discover that they owe a handful of credit retailers thousands of rand. On the upside, applications for SAFPS’s free Protective Registration service, which helps flag high-risk individuals across the member network, increased by 4%. This suggests growing awareness about proactive fraud defence.
No end to the criminal activity
Retail account abuse is on the rise in 2024, with a 155% surge in cases where consumers open retail or store credit accounts with no intention of repaying. “While these come off a low base, the growth is significant and signals stress in the retail lending environment,” said Retief.
The continued prevalence of forged documents, which now account for over 20% of all listings on the database, remains a concerning trend. These range from falsified bank statements to fake payslips, all typically used to ‘game’ credit affordability checks. “The economic pressure on consumers is enormous; we are seeing more first-party fraud where consumers ‘doctor’ their own documents to gain credit access,” Retief said.
There are growing instances of fraudulent passports entering the account and credit system. It is quite difficult for financial institutions to address this issue due to the lack of a centralised passport verification system. On the related topic of employment fraud, SAFPS still sees plenty of fabricated academic qualifications or work histories submitted by job applicants. The employment fraud category declined 11% year-on-year, but this type of fraud still accounts for 8.3% of overall listings.
Institutional clients should note the rise in business fraud, which climbed 25% in 2024. This includes scamsters impersonating legitimate companies and then offering fake loans or services. This crime can lead to reputational harm, legal exposure, and loss of client trust for the targeted brands. One of the ways in which the SAFPS has responded is by launching a new listing category called ‘persona or business unknown’. Members can log suspicious mobile numbers, email addresses, and bank accounts even if the perpetrator’s identity is unclear.
Fraud prevalence aligns with economic activity
Geographically, Gauteng remains the fraud hotspot, accounting for 56% of reported cases, although this is down 5% from the previous year. KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape followed with notable increases of 20% and 6%, respectively. There were also sharp increases in fraud reports from traditionally quieter provinces like the Free State, Northern Cape, and Eastern Cape.
Impersonation trends are rising in provinces where fraud is climbing, a likely indication that these crimes are not only growing in volume but spreading geographically. This is backed by data from SAFPS’s Protective Registrations programme, which show the highest uptake among economically active age groups, evenly split across genders.
SAFPS interventions helped members to save avoid more than R5.0 billion in financial crime in the report year, down from R6.3 billion in 2023. However, since 2014, these initiatives have resulted in cumulative savings of over R30 billion. “This is a huge collective win for SAFPS and its members,” said Retief. A more tangible measure of success is that its members accessed the database over 76 million times in the review period. While slightly down from the 2023 peak, these numbers show continued member engagement.
A quarter-of-a-billion searches
“We have processed over 252 million searches in the last four years,” Retief said, crediting search API refinements and Department of Home Affairs (DHA) data integrations for the success. Looking ahead, platforms like the SAFPS International Fraud Summit will prove essential for cross-sector collaboration. “We are excited to host the 2025 Summit and will continue collaborating with our members and law enforcement to make a meaningful impact,” Retief concluded.
You can assist your clients by educating them on emerging risks in the financial crime and fraud realms. They face risks that go beyond the everyday phishing email to WhatsApp loan scams to fake employment histories and even digitally altered documents. Remember, intermediaries play a critical role in the country’s broader fraud defence network.
Writer’s thoughts:
Financial fraud may feel like something that happens to other people, until it lands in your practice. Have you ever had a client fall victim to impersonation or document fraud? Let us know how it played out. Please comment below, interact with us on X at @fanews_online or email us your thoughts editor@fanews.co.za.
