RBI directed all Scheduled Commercial Banks, Small Finance Banks, Payments Banks, and Co-operative Banks to integrate the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) developed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) into their systems.
- It ensures automating data exchange between banks and DoT's Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) through API (Application Programming Interface)-based integration, enabling real-time responsiveness.
- DIP is an online secure platform for sharing information related to misuse of telecom resources among the stakeholders for the prevention of cyber-crime and financial fraud.
What is a Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)?
- Launched in May 2025 by DoT’s Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU).
- A risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number to have been associated with Medium, High, or Very High risk of financial fraud.
- This classification is an outcome of inputs obtained from various stakeholders including reporting on Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C’s) National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), DoT’s Chakshu platform, and Intelligence shared by banks and financial institutions.
How will it help banks to prevent Cyber fraud?
- Banks and financial institutions can use FRI in real time to take preventive measures such as declining suspicious transactions, issuing alerts or warnings to customers, etc.
- The DIU regularly shares the Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL) with stakeholders, detailing numbers disconnected due to cybercrime links, failed re-verification, etc.
