A survey of African financial institutions found that 88% of bank and fintech respondents reported more digital fraud, even as fewer respondents rated their cyber-risk exposure as high.
BusinessDay and SikaFinance put the share of bank and fintech respondents who saw a rise in digital fraud over the past year at 88%. Across the full group of surveyed financial institutions, the equivalent response share was 66%. These percentages count respondents who reported an increase; they do not mean fraud itself grew by 88%. The findings reflect participants’ reports and risk judgments, not a direct count of fraud events.
The two results address different questions: whether respondents saw fraud rising and how they assessed their own cyber-risk exposure. The Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) 2026 program listed a session presenting early results from the sixth AFIS-Deloitte barometer. The program described its participants as senior figures from banking, insurance, fintech and capital markets.
SikaFinance reported that the share rating cyber-risk exposure as high fell to 47% from 58% in 2025. At the same time, 51% identified cybersecurity as a major concern overall. That share was 79% among bank respondents, up 19 percentage points, and 63% among fintech respondents, up 29 percentage points, from 2025.
On artificial intelligence, SikaFinance reported that 85% expected it to make a substantial difference in detecting fraud. Respondents also cited obstacles to deploying AI: 56% pointed to data quality, and an equal share cited cybersecurity and privacy concerns. The results pair expectations for fraud detection with concerns about the information and safeguards needed to put the technology to use.
The findings sit alongside separate measures of Nigerian payment fraud and African cybercrime: the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) said payment-fraud losses in Nigeria fell 51% in 2025, while the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) reported that cybercrime losses more than doubled across Africa.
SikaFinance reported that the full barometer is expected to be published in January 2027.
