NH NongHyup Bank Sees Voice Phishing Losses Surge 2.3 Times in Two Years Despite Increasing Staff and Budget

Personnel Up 88% and Operations Budget Up 32% from 2023

Damages for Customers Aged 60 and Over Surge 6.5 Times

NH NongHyup Bank expanded its dedicated personnel and budget to prevent telecommunication financial fraud, including voice phishing, but the amount of financial damages has more than doubled.

On September 17, according to Rep. Lee Sungkwon of the National Assembly’s Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans & Fisheries Committee, who received a report from the Financial Supervisory Service via the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NongHyup), the total amount of personal damages caused by fraudulent-bank accounts at NongHyup Bank amounted to 20.594 billion won in 2023, 32.785 billion won in 2024, and 47.174 billion won in the previous year. This represents a 129.06% increase compared to 2023.

Notably, a large proportion of losses were borne by seniors in their 60s or older. Of the 47.174 billion won in financial scam damages in 2025, 17.809 billion won was incurred by customers aged 60 and over, accounting for 37.75% of the total. This is more than 6.5 times higher than the 2.698 billion won recorded in 2023.

Rep. Lee pointed out that even though NongHyup Bank has increased its workforce and budget to prevent financial fraud, the scale of the damage continues to grow.

The number of employees dedicated to voice phishing prevention and response increased from 25 in 2023 to 37 in 2024 and 47 in 2025, reflecting an 88% rise over two years. The budget allocated for operating the suspicious transaction account monitoring center and related work also rose by 31.82%, from 684.88 million won in 2023 to 902.86 million won. In 2023, the bank also invested 1.9635 billion won to establish a new monitoring system for suspicious accounts.

In response, NongHyup Bank explained that the introduction of an abnormal transaction detection system has reduced misdetections and increased the number of cases successfully blocked, thereby improving the efficiency of monitoring work.

However, Rep. Lee stated, "Although NongHyup Bank has expanded personnel and budget for voice phishing prevention and even introduced a new system, the amount of damage has increased significantly. Given the particularly high damages among senior customers in their 60s or older, the current response system must be thoroughly re-examined."

Yonhap News Agency

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.