DoT's Financial Fraud Risk Indicator Prevents Over ₹5,000 Crore in Cyber Fraud Transactions

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has announced that its Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) has successfully prevented suspected cyber fraud transactions worth more than ₹5,000 crore (₹5,043.73 crore) within fifteen months of its deployment. Launched on May 22, 2025, under the government's Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP), the real-time risk assessment framework scores mobile numbers based on their potential involvement in cybercrime and financial fraud. The FRI system categorizes mobile identifiers into medium, high, and very high-risk tiers by analyzing multi-source inputs. These data streams include citizen complaints filed on the Sanchar Saathi portal, reports from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, telecom operator analytics, and operational intelligence provided by financial institutions. Over 1,600 organizations—including major public and private banks, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service providers, non-banking financial companies, and insurance entities—now consume these risk scores in real time during customer onboarding and payment processing. When a payment or digital transaction involves a high-risk mobile number, participating institutions apply automated intervention controls. These range from displaying warning alerts to delaying or declining suspicious money transfers before funds leave a citizen's account. The DoT highlighted that the pace of protection has accelerated significantly, with over ₹2,000 crore in fraudulent transactions averted between April and August 2026 alone. Officials emphasized that stopping cyber fraud at the source eliminates the need for post-incident police investigations, bank account freezes, and lengthy recovery processes for victims.