DoT’s Financial Fraud Risk Indicator Helps Prevent Over ₹5,000 Crore in Suspected Cyber Fraud

The Department of Telecommunications’ Financial Fraud Risk Indicator has helped financial institutions prevent suspected cyber fraud transactions worth more than ₹5,000 crore within 15 months of its launch.

The Financial Fraud Risk Indicator, or FRI, was introduced on May 22, 2025 under the Department of Telecommunications’ Digital Intelligence Platform. It provides banks and other financial institutions with real-time risk information linked to mobile numbers that may be associated with cybercrime or financial fraud.

According to the Department of Telecommunications, the cumulative value of suspected fraud prevented through the system reached ₹5,043.73 crore by August 2026. The figure stood at ₹139.16 crore in August 2025, while more than ₹2,000 crore was prevented in the four months from April 2026 alone.

The system classifies mobile numbers into Medium, High and Very High risk categories. These assessments are based on information drawn from several sources, including reports submitted through the Sanchar Saathi platform, data from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, intelligence supplied by telecom operators and financial institutions, and other telecom-related indicators.

Risk information is then shared securely with banks, payment service providers and other financial-sector entities through the Digital Intelligence Platform. Institutions can incorporate these signals into transaction monitoring, customer onboarding and fraud-control systems.

This gives banks and payment platforms an additional layer of information before a transaction is completed. High-risk payments can be flagged for verification or stopped before funds leave the customer’s account, depending on the fraud-control procedures adopted by the institution.

The approach addresses one of the main difficulties in digital financial fraud: speed. Once money reaches a fraudster, it can quickly move through multiple accounts, making tracing and recovery more difficult. Screening a transaction before completion reduces dependence on post-fraud recovery measures such as account freezing, transaction tracing and inter-bank coordination.

The initiative also reflects the growing use of telecom data in financial fraud prevention. Many online scams involve a mobile number at some stage, whether through fraudulent calls, messages, fake identity verification requests or social-engineering attempts. Linking telecom intelligence with banking risk systems allows suspicious numbers identified in one part of the ecosystem to be acted upon elsewhere.

Banks and UPI service providers are already using FRI signals to identify transactions involving mobile numbers classified as High or Very High risk. The Department of Telecommunications is working with the Reserve Bank of India, the National Payments Corporation of India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and other institutions to expand the use of the framework.

The system is also being extended beyond conventional banking. Securities intermediaries are being brought into the framework to address fraud involving trading and demat accounts, while insurance and pension-sector entities are being included to strengthen fraud checks in their respective systems.

The wider Digital Intelligence Platform now connects more than 1,600 stakeholders, including telecom service providers, banks, financial institutions, law-enforcement agencies and government departments. It also distributes information on disconnected or suspicious mobile numbers through mechanisms such as the Mobile Number Revocation List.

To support adoption, the Department has conducted more than 25 training sessions covering around 1,500 banks, financial institutions and regulators. These sessions have focused on FRI methodology, integration with the Digital Intelligence Platform and the use of telecom-risk signals in fraud-detection systems.

Citizen reports are another source of intelligence. Suspicious calls, SMS messages and WhatsApp communications reported through Chakshu on the Sanchar Saathi platform can contribute to the identification of potentially fraudulent numbers.

People who have already suffered a financial cyber fraud are advised to contact the national cybercrime helpline at 1930 or report the incident through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal as quickly as possible. Suspicious telecom communications can separately be reported through Sanchar Saathi.

The ₹5,043.73-crore figure indicates how fraud prevention is increasingly being pushed upstream, before money moves into networks of mule accounts. For India’s rapidly expanding digital payments ecosystem, the FRI adds telecom intelligence to the tools already used by banks and payment platforms to assess transaction risk.