Digital Banking Frauds and the RBI Integrated Ombudsman Scheme: An Empirical Study of Victim Behaviour, Reporting Patterns and Grievance Awareness among Young Urban Users in Hyderabad

This study set out to examine the landscape of digital banking fraud experiences, reporting behaviour, grievance satisfaction, and awareness of the RBI Integrated Ombudsman Scheme among young urban banking users in Hyderabad. The evidence gathered from 74 respondents reveals a troubling picture: a majority of users have experienced digital fraud, half of victims do not report incidents to their banks, institutional satisfaction is largely neutral rather than positive, and two-thirds of users are entirely unaware of the RBIOS, India's flagship unified banking grievance mechanism.

Anderson, R., Barton, C., Böhme, R., Clayton, R., van Eeten, M., Levi, M., Moore, T., & Savage, S. (2013). Measuring the cost of cybercrime. In R. Böhme (Ed.), The economics of information security and privacy (pp. 265–300). Springer. Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. (2018). Sound practices: Implications of fintech developments for banks and bank supervisors. Bank for International Settlements. Bhasin, M. L. (2016). Audit committee and corporate governance: Exploring cyber frauds in Indian banks. Business, Management and Economics Research, 2(5), 90–104. Garg, A., & Bhardwaj, S. (2021). Rising digital banking frauds in India: A study of cybercrime patterns and regulatory responses. Journal of Financial Crime, 28(3), 840–856. Herley, C. (2009). So long, and no thanks for the externalities: The rational rejection of security advice by users. Proceedings of the 2009 Workshop on New Security Paradigms, ACM, 133–144. Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C). (2024). Annual report on cybercrime statistics. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Jagatic, T., Johnson, N., Jakobsson, M., & Menczer, F. (2007). Social phishing. Communications of the ACM, 50(10), 94–100. Jakobsson, M., & Myers, S. (Eds.). (2006). Phishing and countermeasures: Understanding the increasing problem of electronic identity theft. John Wiley & Sons. Kaur, J., Sharma, S. K., & Singh, N. (2021). Procedural justice and customer satisfaction in banking complaint management: Evidence from India. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 39(4), 612–634. Malhotra, P., & Singh, B. (2009). The impact of internet banking on bank performance and risk: The Indian experience. Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics, 2(4), 43–62. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). (2023). Digital India: Progress report. Government of India.