March 2020 marked a watershed moment for digital banking. It marked the mass acceleration away from branches and onto banking sites and apps, with more consumers banking digitally than ever.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals were quick to follow, emboldened to capitalize on the surge in digital banking. Thirteen percent of financial institutions (FIs) that fell victim to fraud lost at least $50 million in the past two years, and business email compromise (BEC) scams cost nearly 20,000 FIs roughly $1.8 billion in 2020 alone. This underscores a mounting need to tighten digital data security and stop fraudsters in their tracks.
Many FIs have thus turned to digital anti-fraud innovations, including those that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to assist their fight against fraud. These efforts will be in vain, however, if FIs cannot conveniently channel those solutions through a unified case management system. The August Preventing Financial Crimes Playbook: A Guide To Overcoming Commercial And Corporate Payment Fraud examines how digital fraud has increased over the past year, which solutions FIs are using to tackle this rise and why harnessing content management systems can help them get a more holistic and comprehensive view of fraud in their
organizations.
Around The Financial Fraud Space
Banks, card networks and other players across the financial and payment spaces are working to boost their AI- and ML-enabled fraud detection capabilities, and American Express and Visa are no exception. The card networks are both testing new AI-enabled anti-fraud systems and use synthetic data sets to test their effectiveness before launch. Visa reported that this new method has helped boost its AI system’s effectiveness by 20 percent to 30 percent.
Card networks and FIs are not the only organizations facing mounting fraud risks, either. Eighty percent of all U.S. businesses said they believe that their revenues are poised to grow over the next year, but also that heightened cybersecurity risks could dampen those gains, especially 
now that a large portion of the workforce works online from home. This is putting the focus on case management systems that can help companies keep a closer eye on all of their fraud-fighting solutions rather than relying on fragmented approaches that make it likelier for bad actors to slip through the cracks.
Many businesses are only just beginning to grasp the full extent of the cybersecurity threats posed by the shift to the remote workplace. Most companies’ IT infrastructures were designed for a workspace in which employees work from a single location rather than remotely, and the transition to a remote office space has left many vulnerable to cyberattacks. Forty-five percent of IT professionals in the U.S. have seen an uptick in cyberattacks since March 2020, in fact, and businesses that do not update their infrastructures to reflect this new digital normal risk falling victim to this surge in cybercrime.
To learn more about how case management solutions and advanced technologies are being used to fight fraud across the financial space, download the Playbook.
M&T Bank On Balancing Security, Data Privacy And Smooth Customer Experiences
Fighting fraud is a key part of the banking business, but bank customers are often more concerned with being able to access fast, frictionless online banking experiences than they are about fraud risks.
In this month’s feature story, PYMNTS spoke to Sonny Sonnenstein, senior vice president and chief information officer of Consumer, Business and Digital Banking Technology at M&T Bank, about the importance of using tools like AI-enabled risk analytics to ensure customers’ security without compromising data privacy and user experience.
Deep Dive: How Case Management Solutions, Innovative Technologies Give FIs A Fighting Chance Against Fraud
The pandemic triggered a surge in digital fraud and other forms of cybercrime. This resulted in a heightened security risk that has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels — and banks are on the hook to keep bad actors from stealing their customers’ personal and financial information.
This month’s Deep Dive analyzes how FIs can leverage unified case management systems to streamline their anti-fraud strategies and get a better sense of where their operations stand in the fight against fraud.
About The Tracker
The Preventing Financial Crimes Playbook, a PYMNTS and Bottomline collaboration, examines how corporate and commercial payment fraud is evolving, the most significant fraud risks faced by businesses and which technologies or solutions could be employed to best protect against fraud.