The bank has identified several hotspots across the country in terms of large scale mule accounts | Photo Credit: REUTERS

Private sector lender Axis Bank, which saw around 30 per cent year-on-year fall in retail customers frauds last fiscal, continues to witness a high double-digit decline in the both volume and the value of frauds that are getting perpetrated to the bank as the lender is replacing its rule-based systems with AI-based systems.

“We had rule-based systems that were detecting frauds. Now, what we are doing is we are replacing rule-based systems with AI-based systems, so our ability to anticipate or identify something as a fraud ahead of time is going up,” Gaurav Gupta, Group Head – Financial Crime Intelligence, Axis Bank, told mediapersons in Kolkata on Wednesday.

AI-led Monitoring

Backed by its AI-led fraud intelligence, real-time customer controls and a strong branch-led ecosystem, the bank witnessed around 40 per cent reduction in fraud incidents across retail mobile banking, internet banking and shopping malls in last financial year compared to previous financial year. Digital frauds prevented through AI-led monitoring and risk-based controls saw 4.5-fold increase in FY26 vs FY25.

Asked about the trend during the ongoing first quarter this fiscal, Gupta said, “On a sequential basis or on a year-on-year basis, we continue to see a decline in both the volume and the value of fraud, and those declines are very, very significant in high double digits. Whatever technology investments we made around this area of making banking safer they continue to deliver."

On the back of the evolving sophistication of digital threats, including impersonation-led scams, fake investment platforms, malicious applications and QR code manipulation, the bank’s intelligence-led prevention architecture enables it early detection and action on suspicious transactions, behavioural pattern analysis to flag deviations in real time and network-level intelligence to uncover organised fraud rings.

Mule Hotspots

Increasingly, fraudsters are operating through organised networks, with mule accounts acting as intermediary layers that obscure fund trails and enable rapid movement of illicit funds across multiple accounts. The bank has identified several hotspots across the country in terms of large scale mule accounts. “In West Bengal, significant hotspots are adjacent to the border areas of Bangladesh. Then there are certain parts of Assam which are vulnerable. There are hotspots in Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and outskirts of Chennai,” said Sameer Shetty, Group Head – Digital Business, Transformation & Strategic Programs, Axis Bank.

Shetty said the bank’s strategy to shifting from rule-based monitoring to predictive and adaptive risk management has enabled it to bring down the incidence of mule hotspots and mule accounts by a very significant margin.

“So, what we have done is that for these identified hotspots, we have introduced product level controls, enhanced monitoring, and also changes in our own monitoring system, which identifies these transactions originating from these areas as being slightly higher risk compared to the rest,” he added.

Published on June 17, 2026