As my colleague Dan McConaghy reported Friday, FICO met with about 30 delegates last week on how a new enterprise fraud strategy could benefit their organisations in the fight against financial crime. The delegates were attending the highly anticipated Heads of Fraud conference in Phuket where they heard from some of FICO's leading fraud consultants and scientists from around the world, as well as some of the delegates' most experienced peers from around the Asia Pacific region, about latest fraud trends and best practice in detection and prevention.
Consumer confidence in financial products and services has fast become a key differentiator in these difficult financial times and such confidence is best derived from understanding, expectation and delivery of a common standard of protection.
Consider boarding an aeroplane and not receiving a safety briefing! Whilst we may take these for granted, the fact that they are given, in a similar format, on every commercial flight reassures travellers that they are in safe hands.
Managing fraud within and across channels attracts an equal level of expectation for the consumer. Customers want to know that their financial products are protected, and what the bank will do should they become a victim of fraud.
Delegates heard how FICO's differentiated enterprise strategy — taking a modular and component-driven approach to maximise defences at the perimeter of each channel and product, and leveraging where appropriate pre-existing defence investments — can pay dividends for banks that want to demonstrate the strength of their fraud protection, improve customer confidence and reduce loss exposure.
Several compelling examples of how the new enterprise fraud strategy can be used most effectively were highlighted, including:
- Combining geographic data from customers who are accessing their remote banking and using their credit or debit card across a similar time period to better inform overall propensity of risk and reduce false positives
- Optimising a bank's operating model such that fraud strategies and operational fulfilment are aligned and fraud risk management centralized
- Using customer contact solutions such as those provided by FICO’s new acquisition Adeptra to improve the speed and efficiency with which alerts are worked and the associated customer experience
Linking and leveraging relevant data across products and channels and providing a common level of fraud protection at a customer or account level, rather than a transaction level, is no longer just desirous but a prerequisite for many financial institutions, and an expectation by many discerning customers. Based on the meeting in Phuket, it’s clear that Asian banks intend to take a leading position in this area.
