Passwords were and remain an important aspect of security in the financial sector, however, when you reflect on the whole scenario of financial mechanisms you might be surprised to find out that the impact of stolen passwords or compromised credentials is quite low in terms of financial losses. In fact, two researchers from Microsoft published a stimulating paper about this and explain how mules and not victims of a fraud lose money!
Read Cormac Herley and Dinei Florêncio paper called ‘Is everything we know about password stealing wrong?’ here – http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/161829/EverythingWeKnow.pdf