It’s summer, and for most of San Diego, this year that means visiting “Top Gun” film locations or heading to one of our city’s amazing beaches. It also means enjoying the iconic Beach Boys no matter where you go.
As for me? Intrepid payments professional that I am, my thoughts are still lingering on what a great event FICO World 2022 was, the amazing fraud insights we shared, and how excited I already am for FICO World 2023. In that spirit (and in the Beach Boys theme), here’s a roundup of the key points I’m pondering in these remaining weeks of summer.
A Greatest Hits Compilation
For payments, risk, fraud prevention and financial crimes professionals, FICO World 2022 delivered a wealth of information on rapidly emerging trends and solutions. My colleague Adam Davies and I have blogged about highlights:
Fraud Trends for 2022: Top 5 Includes "Scamdemic" and Bad Bots is Adam’s round-up of key fraud trends discussed at FICO World. Here’s an excerpt of what Adam reported:
1. Synthetic Identities and Application Fraud
FICO colleagues Andy Procter and Supriti Singh were on hand with their presentation Application Fraud – Rules, Models and Humans. They helped delegates understand how FICO’s social network analytics can be deployed to find the hidden links between entities, visualize the networks of criminal behavior and facilitate the prioritization and investigation of cases.
2. The Rise of the Bots
Criminals are making use of automation to industrialize their fraudulent attacks, including card fraud. Some customers had found that bots were being used to uncover the right 3 digits for the CVV. One customer told how they had been able to deploy user defined variables in FICO Falcon Fraud Manager to track and understand payment velocities. They were able to identify attempts to uncover CVVs on the cards they had issued, identifying a subset to be blocked and reissued.
3. Innovative Customer Communications for Fraud
Removing friction from legitimate customer interactions – and getting disputed transactions back on track – calls for customer communications that are integrated with fraud detection.
At FICO World, a US customer spoke about the importance of two-way customer communications and how they built an automated fraud workflow to automate to speed case resolution. Two Brazilian financial institutions also shared how they are deploying WhatsApp as an integrated channel for customer communications, allowing rapid closure of fraud cases over two-thirds of the time in the preferred channel for customers.
4. It Isn’t Just a Pandemic – There’s Also a Scamdemic!
FICO’s Tanya Baker was on hand with her presentation Fraud Analytics Innovation – Sophisticated Tools for Challenging Times to talk customers through FICO’s analytical innovations that tackle scams, including the FICO machine learning model for scam detection.
5. Convergence – Beyond Fraud and Financial Crime Compliance
Another hot topic in the past few years has been the convergence of fraud and financial crime departments. It continued to be a topic of debate at this FICO World, but the approach has become more nuanced. Key to this discussion was the use of data across both functions, as addressed in a breakout featuring Aite’s Julie Conroy and me.
The Role of Data in Managing Fraud and Financial Crime Today was a session I had the pleasure to chair. Julie and I covered a range of topics, kicking off our discussion with two essential questions: “How does the pandemic change the way banks operate, from a fraud perspective?” and “Are organizations more or less focused on data because of the pandemic?”
Over the course of the breakout we dove into how the pandemic changed fraud, including how the explosion of remote channels, digital onboarding and the like ushered in a tremendous set of additional incoming data that needed to be dealt with, in terms of format and other ingestion-related issues.
We also covered the still-elusive holistic view of the customer; Julie’s latest research on the state of data sharing between fraud detection and AML systems and functions; and where banks are now making technology investments now.
Global Fraud Trends: What’s Happening and What’s Next? highlights the fraud trends breakout session at FICO World, with a panel of fraud professionals from Brazil, Turkey and North America. The discussion was chaired by FICO’s Debbie Cobb and included the ever-popular Julie Conroy, Ulisses Okamoto and Kerem Özdamar.
We in the audience were fascinated by the different fraud schemes and scams that Ulisses and Kerem shared from their regions, with Julie pointing out that a surge of new mobile banking users during the pandemic created ripe conditions for fraudsters. The panel then shared some of the measures they are using to directly engage customers in the fight against fraud and scams, and closed with a reveal of their “magic wand” wishes.
Good Vibrations in Orlando and beyond
In terms of the overall event, FICO World always pulls out the stops with a stellar lineup of keynote speakers, mainstage events and more than 80 content-rich breakout sessions arranged in special interest tracks. This year was the best yet, with superstar author Michael Lewis as a keynote speaker, and customers taking center stage in numerous mainstage presentations, sitting down for 15-minute conversations with FICO moderators and other customers.
We amplified what was happening in Orlando on social media channels such as the FICO blog, FICO’s YouTube channel, LinkedIn livestreaming, Instagram and Twitter, where event goers made #FICOWorld22 such a popular hashtag it appeared on Twitter’s list of global trending topics. This made it possible for people who couldn’t attend the event live to participate virtually, and has served as a useful reference library for everyone after the fact.
I especially enjoyed the daily video recaps that FICO’s on-site team put together, allowing those of us onsite to catch up on what we missed, as well as folks worldwide.
Catch a Wave of Innovative Thinking
Over 1,000 customers and partners came together to dive deep into this year’s theme, “Spurring the Applied Intelligence Revolution,” learning about new and innovative ways to fight financial crime, how to turn regulatory challenges into opportunities, and new ideas to improve the customer journey.
In my mind, this was one of the most electric FICO Worlds ever, fueled by attendees’ high energy and spirited interactions. At breakout sessions and impromptu sidebar conversations, everyone brought their ‘A game,’ asking high-quality questions and sharing equally thoughtful answers. It’s hard to replicate those kinds of off-the-cuff interactions using virtual technology, and attendees all seemed to relish being able to meet and talk face-to-face.
Be True to Your School (and Industry Colleagues)
It’s true that many of the customer organizations FICO serves are competitors. But I would characterize FICO World 2022 as having a truly collaborative, collegial atmosphere, filled with very open and frank discussions about common problems and how to solve them. In breakout sessions and at mainstage events, applause broke out for customers who spoke about real problems, insights and solutions. FICO World 2022 brought together a global community of professionals interested in sharing and solving their most pressing business problems, with an emphasis on analytic innovation to support improved consumer experiences.
I Got Around – and Checked out the FICO World Innovation Center
It was impossible to miss the FICO World Innovation Center, built in a bright and airy space near – you guessed it – the main dining area. The Innovation Center was a welcome respite from the buzzing energy, a place where attendees could have quiet conversation with FICO product experts and receive personalized demos. Every FICO capability was accessible through the Innovation Center.
One-on-one consultation sessions were back at FICO World 2022, too, an immensely popular offering that put customers in direct conversation with FICO experts. Hundreds of private consultations were held in Orlando, an invaluable opportunity that attendees perennially rate highly.
Fun, Fun, Fun
Of course, FICO World would not be FICO World without once-in-a-lifetime evening events. The welcome reception saw a performance by Gipsy Nation a la Gipsy Kings, a French band that had the crowd swaying with virtuoso guitar playing and infectious rhythms.
FICO also took over a chunk of Universal Studios theme park, where guests walked and dined, and then had unfettered access to some of the hottest rides in Universal’s Islands of Adventure. The conference went out with a bang at the Hard Rock Café inside Universal Studios park, where we all enjoyed a live performance from the band The Head And The Heart (their first live show since the start of the pandemic!).
There is definitely more to learn from FICO World 2022 as you enjoy the rest of the summer. Check out these additional resources:
- Elo Reduces Payment Network Fraud by 30% With FICO Fraud Analytics goes into detail about how the Brazilian payment network provider on a FICO® Decisions Award for fraud management.
- FICO World 2022: Spurring the Applied Intelligence Revolution captures FICO chief marketing officer Nikhil Behl’s enthusiasm for FICO World, with a recap of keynote and mainstage presentations, and this year’s conference theme.
- Access and download FICO World 2022 presentations
- Find out more and register to attend FICO World 2023
Follow my latest thoughts on fraud, financial crime and FICO’s entire family of software solutions on Twitter @FraudBird.
