Central Bank of Russia plans to start publishing ranking of banks based on their level of combating droppers - Nabiullina

YEKATERINBURG. Feb 18 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia plans to start publishing a ranking of banks based on their level of combating droppers, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said.

"Opinions on the publication of rankings were divided, but I think that we will eventually, after some time, move to publishing them," Nabiullina said during the Cybersecurity in Finance forum in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday.

"We will probably allow some time, we propose allowing time for correcting mistakes, so to speak. In this rating, we will not be showing specific vulnerabilities. We will be showing the resulting data. It seems to me that this could be a fairly good public instrument," she said.

Nabiullina said that the Central Bank currently distributes these rankings (or anti-rankings) of large banks on droppers only to those involved. These include indicators for the volume of stolen funds in total transfers and the number of droppers in the overall client base, which demonstrates the banks' level of fraud prevention. Similar rankings are currently published based on consumer complaints, for example, against banks and insurers.

A dropper is a bank client who provides fraudsters with their card or bank account for laundering stolen money, or cashes it out themselves. They generally receive a reward for this; however, in some cases they may be misled and not know that they have become an accomplice to a fraudulent scheme.