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The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has introduced a new fraud-prevention tool called the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) to help identify and curb financial scams linked to mobile numbers. The FRI is a risk-based metric that analyzes and classifies mobile numbers into medium, high, or very high risk categories based on their likelihood of involvement in financial fraud. This classification draws on data from multiple sources including the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), DoT’s Chakshu platform, and intelligence shared by banks and payment service providers. The indicator is made available to banks, non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) and UPI service providers through the Department’s Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP).
Once a number is flagged, stakeholders can take preventive actions such as declining suspicious transactions, sending alerts, issuing warnings, or delaying payments when a flagged number is used. The Reserve Bank of India has advised banks and payment platforms to integrate FRI into their systems so they can respond in real time to risk signals. Since its launch, many institutions have adopted the system and taken action against high-risk accounts by restricting or freezing them to reduce fraud exposure.
