We need to focus our energies on spotting signs of fraud in its early stages, if we are to prevent financial loss later on, writes Matthew Addison.
Fraud is typically tracked and reported when money is taken from an individual’s account, a charge is made to their card perhaps to purchase a flight or a mobile phone, or someone else uses their details to obtain a loan or take out an insurance policy. The focus is on financial loss – the transaction stage of the fraud lifecycle.
But, in fact, fraud begins much earlier, often with a call to a contact centre. Organisations often miss this vital part of the process, but it’s when fraudsters validate stolen data or steal more information to prepare their attacks. If we are to reduce the amount stolen through fraud, we have to take seriously this stage in the fraud lifecycle and the role contact centres play in it.
Businesses from all sectors need to gain an understanding of what’s going on so they don’t miss the critical insight they need for preventing fraud. The focus needs to shift from monitoring and reporting fraud levels based on financial transactions, to spotting and preventing customer data loss.
Fraud seen in all sectors
There’s no doubt that fraudulent activity is widespread. Our recent survey of 250 UK-based senior fraud professionals in organisations with large contact centres in the financial services, retail, travel and telecoms sectors confirmed this. More than 95% of respondents report fraud-related activity across all business sectors, with telephony channels being just as vulnerable as online or mobile channels.
The research suggests that organisations do understand that contact centres are a target.In fact, a high proportion of respondents from the travel industry in particular report high fraud activity in both interactive voice response (IVR) at 66% and with contact centre agents (55%).
Yet the research also shows that many companies still take a reactive approach to fraud. Fewer than half of those surveyed have automated fraud-detection methods in the contact centre, such as flagging incoming calls from blacklisted numbers (44%) or flagging incoming calls because of unusual behaviour, such as making multiple calls in quick succession (39%).
And it’s these proactive methods that organisations need to deploy if they are to identify and prevent the data loss that signifies the early signs of fraud.
For full details on the finding of the survey, you can read the report.
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