NEW DELHI, July 3 -- In a major step to combat cyber-enabled financial frauds, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated all Scheduled Commercial Banks, Small Finance Banks, Payments Banks, and Co-operative Banks to integrate the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) developed by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

The advisory, issued on June 30, 2025, aims to boost fraud detection by leveraging real-time telecom and financial intelligence. The FRI system, launched in May 2025 by DoT's Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU), assigns risk levels-Medium, High, or Very High-to mobile numbers based on data from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, DoT's Chakshu platform, and financial institutions.

The system enables banks to flag,...