American Banker says bank robberies have become increasingly less common in recent years (although it ticked back up in the middle of the last decade) . Bank robberies peaked in 1991 when there were 9,388. By 2010 this had fallen to 5,546 and the trend continued down to half-century low of 1,500 in 2020. The number have risen slightly since then to 1,724 in 2021. So they are on the way down.
Meanwhile, in a country where there isn’t a coin shortage, Denmark has recorded its first year without bank robberies. Banks just don’t have that much cash in them any more. Twenty years ago, Denmark had 200 bank robberies every year. Now it has none and with cash accounting for only 12% of retail payments, it will a surprise if it ever sees any again. And to show that this trend is real, note that in also nearly cashless Sweden, there were five bank robberies in 2020, down from the the 2011 peak of 43. Only three of these were armed robberies.
Bank robbery is a pretty dumb crime. In heist moves they are meticulously planned by sinister groups of master criminals, but in reality most robberies are committed by people walking in and demanding money. In 2021, about 85% of US bank crime was committed at the tellers’ counter. More than half of these walk-in heists involve either a weapon being brandished or the threat to do so. This results in many bank robberies becoming traumatic and dangerous events for employees and customers in the bank. This why amongst those celebrating the remarkable Danish statistic are the bank workers themselves. “It’s something you can’t even begin to understand the emotional impact of if you haven’t experienced it yourself,” said Steen Lund Olsen, the vice-president of bank worker’s union.
The figures for bank robbery only show the number of attacks when cash was the target. If you extend the definition to include attacks where identities were the target, you get a different picture. Bank robbery isn’t going down at all, it’s going up and up. It’s just that it’s the customers’ identities that are being stolen, not the banks’ money.
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The Federal Trade Commission received nearly 1.7 million reports of identity theft in 2021. Identity theft was the most common type of complaint lodged by consumers, and it accounted for 29.4% of all the reports received by the FTC.
The identity theft statistics collected by the FTC are based on reports from consumers, so it’s likely that there are many cases of identity fraud that go uncounted.
From Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud Statistics for 2022 |The Ascent.
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Of the different types of identity fraud, bank fraud was up 39%.
Bank fraud cases grew 39% in 2021 compared to the previous year while “other” identity theft increased by a mere 7%.
Fraudsters using stolen identity information to open new bank accounts under a victim’s name grew by 64% in 2021. Nearly 84,000 Americans reported new account bank fraud in 2021 compared to about 51,000 in 2020, according to the FTC.
Bank fraud relating to debit cards, electronic funds transfers, or ACH grew by 8% in 2021 compared to the previous year. Existing account fraud increased by 5%.
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