₹660cr in frauds averted: How India's financial risk indicator works
What's the story
The Indian government recently revealed that its Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) has prevented digital payment frauds worth ₹660 crore in just six months of FRI's rollout in May 2025. The FRI is a risk-based metric developed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to detect mobile numbers associated with financial fraud. It categorizes these numbers into medium, high, or very high risk categories.
Operation details
FRI's functioning and data sources
The FRI works silently across telecom and banking networks to prevent high-risk transactions from going through. It takes inputs from various sources including telecom service providers, banks, digital payment platforms, and reports on cybercrime/fraud-reporting portals. These signals are processed on DoT's Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP), which enables authorized institutions to share intelligence about suspected misuse of telecom resources.
Prevention mechanism
How FRIs prevent financial fraud
When a user initiates a digital transaction, the system checks if the mobile number involved has been flagged under FRI. If the risk level is high, banks and payment apps can take preventive action such as declining the transaction or asking for additional verification. This way, FRI helps prevent losses from scams like fake customer-care calls, OTP frauds, SIM-swap attacks, and account takeovers.
Information
Citizen participation in FRI's effectiveness
Citizen participation is crucial for FRI's effectiveness. Reports submitted through Sanchar Saathi platform, like suspected fraud calls or fake connections, contribute to overall risk assessment. The government considers this public participation as critical in identifying patterns, blocking offending numbers, and disabling fraudulent connections at scale.