According to Experian’s 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report, year-on-year, 57% of businesses continue to experience rising fraud loses, often resulting from their inability and/or lack of means to authenticate customers. Fraudulent activity is likely to increase and continue to grow with the most persistent fraud and scam threats to financial institutions the world over today being Synthetic Identity Fraud.
With Synthetic Identity Fraud, a fraudster combines the use of a consumer’s real and fake personal information in order to create an entirely new identity (also know as Frankenstein IDs) and use this to attain credit such as opening a bank account or applying for a credit card or loan. The continuous uptick on this is attributed to several factors such as customer data breaches, social engineering attacks and dark web data access which can cause an immense amount of damage to various business sectors, with significant impact to banking, credit and lending institutions.
It’s been estimated that, each year, around 10-15% of banking losses derive from Synthetic Identity Fraud, making it the one of the fastest growing type of financial crime. Financial institutions are often the real victims, as, in cases of fraud losses, there is no person to trace nor collect from. However, the danger can also go well beyond this loss. Banks who are unable to correctly verify whether a customer accessing its services is a real person or a synthetic creation may additionally expose themselves to massive fines, liability claims and, in some cases, bank personnel potentially facing imprisonment.
So what can be done? Early and faster fraud detection coupled with vigilance is a key step to keep this fraud threat at bay. As Synthetic Identity Fraud continues to proliferate throughout the Philippine financial landscape, banking, credit and lending institutions will need to take the necessary measures to protect themselves and their customers from this threat by using fraud and scam detection tools that are at their disposal and partnering with expert security and fraud identity providers such as GVX Consulting.
As a top solutions provider in the identity protection & security market, GVX Consulting provides relevant cybercrime countermeasure tools such as Know Your Customer (KYC) and Fraud Prevention & Monitoring solutions that reliably allows one to identify and verify users in as early as the onboarding stage. The combined use of such solutions minimizes the risk of loosing to money to Synthetic Identity Fraud and other potential regulation liabilities tied to it.
To find know the best solutions to get protected from Synthetic Identity Fraud, contact GVX Consulting at [email protected] or schedule a demo today.
