New Delhi: The number of bank frauds witnessed a significant on-year increase in the first half of the current fiscal to 18,461 cases and the defrauded amount jumped more than eight-fold to Rs 21,367 crore, according to RBI data released on Thursday.

The Reserve Bank of India has released the ‘Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2023-24’ that presents the performance of the banking sector during 2023-24 and 2024-25 so far. The report said the number of frauds during April-September stood at 18,461, involving Rs 21,367 crore. On the other hand, 14,480 cases involving Rs 2,623 crore were reported in the comparative period during last fiscal.

Meanwhile, the profitability of banks improved for the sixth consecutive year in 2023-24 and their NPAs declined to a 13-year low of 2.7%, according to the RBI data.

India’s strong macroeconomic fundamentals have boosted the performance and soundness of the domestic banking and non-banking financial sectors. “Banks’ profitability rose for the sixth consecutive year in 2023-24 and continued to rise in H1FY25 with the return on assets at 1.4% and return on equity at 14.6%,” stated the report.

Net profit of the scheduled commercial banks increased by 32.8% to Rs 3,49,603 crore during the last fiscal.The NBFC sector exhibited double digit credit growth, while its unsecured lending contracted and asset quality improved further. The GNPA ratio of NBFCs dropped to 3.4% at September-end 2024.