Verafin, North America’s leading cross-institutional BSA/AML and fraud detection solution provider, continues to shape and enhance the future of the fight against financial crime.
In its Fall 2016 Semiannual Risk Prospective the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) highlighted difficulties associated with Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance and operational risk resulting from a heightened environment of cybersecurity threats as key risks for banks of all sizes.
In an environment where banks must “continually up their game” to protect themselves from the latest criminal attacks, over 1500 financial institutions now look to Verafin and its innovative FRAMLx (cross-institutional Fraud detection + AML) solution.
One bank that recently chose Verafin as its preferred BSA/AML software provider is Bank of the Ozarks, an $18B in assets bank headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Bank of the Ozarks, established in 1903, is a high performing regional bank with 249 locations across nine states – recognized for the past four consecutive years by Bank Director magazine as the nation’s top performing bank in its asset category.
“We’ve been using Verafin for a little over six months now and the team here is really impressed,” says Ashley Wisdom, Corporate BSA Officer. “The alerts are very high quality, meaning we’re now able to focus our attention on truly unusual activity. Plus, with the wide range of tools available to us in Verafin, from BSA/AML compliance to fraud detection, we can quickly access the information we need to make better investigative decisions – putting together a more complete picture in less time.”
Wisdom continues, “Another thing that stands out is Verafin’s innovative approach. The software is constantly being enhanced, the updates are seamless, and their customer support is second-to-none.”
Dedication to Innovation
Throughout the past year and into 2017, Verafin has structured its development teams to achieve more dynamic and user focused enhancements of its fraud and suspicious activity detection functionality.
Two primary factors in the success of Verafin’s enhancements are the
- analysis and integration of data from across over 1000 financial institutions in Verafin’s hosted cloud environment, the Verafin Cloud, and
- ongoing consultation with Verafin users, including frequent user experience interviews and usability testing, to constantly ensure alert quality.
Highlights from the past year include:
- Expanded account fraud detection. Verafin users are alerted to a wide range of deposit fraud scenarios from out-of-the-ordinary deposits to potentially suspicious new account activity.
- Enriched check fraud loss prevention. Verafin’s check deposit fraud alerts include a range of check fraud scenarios developed in close consultation with investigators at FIs across the country. In addition, Verafin’s ability to import Check 21 data gives an investigator the ability to view an image of any check and visually compare it to images of past checks deposited in the account.
- ACH, wire, and suspicious online activity alerts. As cybercrime becomes increasingly prominent, Verafin is further evolving cloud-based analytics that identify potentially suspicious ACH and wire transactions and unusual online behavior indicating a compromised account.
- Enhanced cross-institutional information sharing. Verafin provides tools for its users, registered under Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act, to request information from other 314(b)-registered institutions pertaining to potentially suspicious activity. It has also created FRAMLxchange, a complimentary information sharing portal that makes these tools available to all 314(b)-registered FIs.
- Front line account opening tools to further enrich its customer due diligence (CDD) and enhanced due diligence (EDD) functionality. Verafin’s account opening tools enable front line staff to capture customer and account information that is then used by the software’s analytics to uncover unusual activity, particularly early in the relationship. This helps build a more robust customer risk profile, improving ongoing due diligence processes.
- Alert scenarios indicating possible human trafficking. Verafin’s BSA/AML alerts include risk-based scenarios that indicate if a customer is potentially a trafficking victim or perpetrator of trafficking activity.
“Financial crime is always changing,” says Brendan Brothers, Verafin Co-founder. “That’s why innovation is vital and why we treat it as a cornerstone of our approach to developing the industry’s leading BSA/AML and fraud detection solution.”
“Over the past year we’ve put a lot of focus on expanding our analytics to create highly targeted suspicious activity alerts. We’ve built a lot of momentum and the results we’re seeing from our users are very exciting. It’s motivating to know our software is having such a positive impact and is helping so many financial institutions successfully prevent financial crime.”