ICAI's AI initiatives may reduce financial frauds by 25%

Several AI initiatives taken by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) may soon prevent financial frauds by up to 25% in the country. "The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is closely working with its clients, law enforcement agencies, police administration and Economic Offices Wing to detect and prevent frauds," said CA Umesh Ramnarayan Sharma, during a technical session. The quantum of financial frauds is estimated to grow multi-fold to ₹1.2 lakh crore in 2025.

Sharma said that with the kind of fraud prevention outreach happening with multidisciplinary agencies and the artificial intelligence-based interventions that ICAI has now taken up with the clients, the losses on account of financial frauds may come down significantly.

"Our initiatives will help reduce financial loss from frauds by 25% soon," said Sharma.

"We are leveraging artificial intelligence to prevent online frauds. This can be done by knowledge sharing and empowering the CAs to empower the clients through education. We must ensure financial security through financial literacy," Sharma said. He added that even though fewer senior citizens fall victim to fraud, the amount of money lost in each case is usually high.

Sharma added that awareness is key in matters pertaining to this. He pointed out that even though senior citizen clients are more prone to financial frauds, the level of their response to such outreach is slightly lower.

It may be noted that the financial losses may grow multi-fold to ₹1.2 lakh crore in 2025 according to the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), against losses worth ₹22,845 crore in 2024. Instances of cybercrimes like digital arrests, OTP frauds, courier frauds, and duping innocent people of their life's savings have gone through the roof.

The number of financial frauds has gone up to 36.37 lakh in 2024, compared with 24.42 lakh in 2023, according to I4C data.