The ability to detect deposit fraud early and take decisive action is more important for financial institutions (FIs) than ever before.
In its biennial 2015 Deposit Account Fraud Survey, conducted with commercial and savings banks, the American Bankers Association (ABA) found that 74% of respondents saw an increase in fraud attempts over the previous year. The leading loss categories, in order of greatest dollar loss, were debit card, check, mobile banking, and online banking (includes bill pay, ACH, and wire transfers initiated online).
A step ahead
It is in this increasingly hostile fraud environment that Verafin has taken a significant step forward — developing the next generation of deposit fraud detection analytics.
By examining the latest data trends across more than 1400 institutions within the Verafin Cloud, Verafin is developing new and innovative solutions to combat fraud. These new solutions apply advanced analytics to alert on unusual account activity in real-time.
Preventing thousands in fraud losses
Verafin’s latest deposit fraud detection analytics are already helping Logix FCU, headquartered in Burbank, CA with over $4.8B in assets, successfully prevent fraud.
Within weeks of using the new analytics, the credit union prevented thousands of dollars in losses. “We’ve definitely seen a reduction in false positives — the latest alerts are very targeted,” explains Matthew Overin, Manager – Fraud Risk Management at Logix FCU. “They’re helping us catch things that would be very difficult to find without Verafin.”
Verafin’s latest deposit fraud analytics helped alert Overin and his investigative team to fraudulent activity during a mass reissuance of debit cards while the credit union was transitioning to chip-and-pin technology.
“There were mail thieves here in the area who got their hands on some of the reissued cards. They also managed to steal boxes of checks from people’s mail. They were activating our debit cards and using them to deposit the stolen checks through ATMs and then cash out. Verafin’s early alerts meant we prevented thousands of dollars in fraud.”
In addition, the investigative team uncovered fraudulent dormant card transactions. “As part of our card reissue there were a number of cards that hadn’t seen much use by our members, then all of a sudden there was activity. We were able to shut them down quickly. Alerting on just one of those cards helped us prevent a $10,000 loss.”
The success the institution’s investigators are experiencing with the help of Verafin is being noticed throughout the institution. “Our Senior Management team is very impressed with how Verafin has freed up our investigators to do so much more. They can be more proactive and put more focus on their cases, including making calls that can help an arrest. We just weren’t able to be as proactive before.”
Real-time solutions
These new fraud detection scenarios provide innovative solutions for various fraud trends impacting FIs across the country including:
- Deposit Fraud across multiple channels (ATM, Mobile and Branch)
- Wire Fraud
- ACH Fraud
- Online Account Takeover
- Loan Fraud
- Card Fraud
“The Verafin Cloud gives us access to an unprecedented amount of rich data. Working closely with our broad community of FIs allows us to develop new solutions to fight fraud. We can do this with extremely low alert volumes and high detection rates” says Mauriceo Castanheiro, Verafin’s Director of Fraud Analytics. “We are significantly reducing the workload on Fraud and Deposit Operations teams, while helping investigators focus on activity that requires immediate action. Our ability to generate alerts in real-time means investigators are quickly clamping down on fraudulent deposits before taking significant loss.”
