Award Winner: How Network International Stops Millions in Fraud 

Fraud prevention remains top of the agenda for financial institutions worldwide. The weaker your prevention is, the more you will be targeted by criminals. With that sense of urgency, Network International LLC (NI), headquartered in Dubai, has built a world-class fraud prevention system based on a a cloud-hosted version of FICO® Falcon^® Fraud Manager. This system protects some 20+ million customers served by more than 40 financial institutions in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa.

The results NI are seeing just won it a 2024 FICO® Decision Award for Cloud Deployment:

• NI and FICO Falcon Fraud Manager reduced fraud basis points of sales by 82% in 2022, and increased fraud detection rates by 25%.
• They have topped USD9.7 million in fraud to date
• They provided 7.45X ROI to their clients in the current financial year alone

“Considering the continuously evolving nature of fraud and increased regulatory scrutiny on issuers, it is imperative for banks to establish a robust strategy, processes, technology, and resources to prevent financial and reputational losses,” said Arindam Chatterjee, group head, Safety and Security Solutions at Network International. “But deploying an on-premises fraud management solution is complex, challenging, time-consuming, and costly. FICO Falcon Fraud Manager, which we host as a service, has successfully resolved a complex puzzle for banks and payment service providers that have entrusted NI with the end-to-end responsibility of managing fraud across payment channels on their behalf.”

Meeting the Need for Stronger Fraud Prevention

NI adopted FICO Falcon Fraud Manager to address their customers’ unmet need to use a single platform for preventing and detecting fraud across both card (debit, credit and prepaid) and non-card (retail banking, corporate banking, alliance banking and others) product portfolios. FICO Falcon Fraud Manager at NI gives customers complete flexibility to identify the channels they want to integrate, deploying the solution in phases and scaling their operations according to business requirements, fraud perception and regulatory priorities. It enables organizations to address fraud comprehensively with a 360° customer view using a unified platform featuring advanced AI and machine learning models for all payment and service channels.

“Because it’s a hosted service, institutions in any country can use it regardless of the size of their customer base or economy, without concerns about the substantial capex of on-premises deployment and onsite support,” said Chatterjee. “NI-hosted FICO Falcon Fraud Manager suits the requirements equally well for a new bank, small bank, mid-sized bank or a large multi-national bank. We can deploy it faster than an on-premises solution for a customer, and reduce their capital expenditure, resource and training costs. They get effective fraud management from day one.”

In addition to managing the anti-fraud application, environment, network and integrations with client’s payment systems, NI also provides continuous analytics and rule management services, and 24/7/365 fraud monitoring operations carried out by a dedicated team work on case investigations and disposition.

Deploying Across the Middle East and Africa

In some countries with stringent data residency requirements imposed by central banks and regulators, such as the Saudi Central Bank, banks cannot process their data outside their country borders. In response, NI adopted a customer-centric approach and established FICO Falcon Fraud Manager instances as close to the clients as possible, in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and South Africa. These deployments leveraged FICO Falcon Fraud Manager’s native capabilities, including:

• Infrastructure flexibility: on-premises or cloud-agnostic deployments
• Modular architecture
• Containerised components
• Scalability encompassing both vertical and horizontal expansion
• API-based interfaces
• Cross-data centre replication between production and disaster recovery

Because of these capabilities, the NI technology teams could effectively replicate one successful FICO Falcon Fraud Manager deployment across other key regions with substantial growth potential. These regions predominantly serve developing economies during the transition from cash-based transactions to digital payment systems.

Our independent panel of judges for this year’s awards had great things to say about NI. “The judging panel was impressed by the expansive scale of Network International's deployment of FICO Falcon Fraud Manager,” added Eric Kavanagh, CEO Bloor Group and host of InsideAnalysis, who was one of the FICO Decisions Awards judges. “This innovative business model, democratizing advanced technology for a diverse range of organizations, stood out as a testament to their vision and execution, making Network International's achievement truly impressive."

Congratulations to NI on their achievement!

How FICO Can Help You Stop More Fraud

• Explore how FICO helps fight fraud, regardless of channel or portfolio.
• Get details about the FICO® Falcon® Intelligence Network
• Customer Communications Services for Fraud engages customers in real time to fight card and CNP fraud.