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The blunt truth is, insiders who are close to critical systems—or outsiders who are skilled enough to exploit vulnerabilities in anti-fraud and other security controls—will steal. They may target assets they’re entrusted to protect or cook the books to hide their tracks; in the end both types of fraudsters aim to make off with significant money. Here Chris Camacho, Chief Strategy Officer at Flashpoint, offers expert insight into fighting fraud right on your business’ doorstep.

Fraud persists, and frankly, it’s not realistic to believe businesses can take measures that will permanently eradicate it. Fighting fraud, however, doesn’t have to be in vain.

Get inside the adversary’s head

Anti-fraud systems may be effective and getting better, but they’re not going to deter a profit-motivated criminal. The challenge then becomes an exercise in anticipating the fraudster’s next move. In order to get inside an adversary’s head, anti-fraud professionals must consider what incentivises a fraudster and what their targets could be. In most cases, this is a simple exercise: credit card data, personally identifiable information (PII), user account login credentials, and other types of proprietary data and information are common targets.

It’s also imperative to consider how fraudsters might attempt to hurdle existing controls in order to access your business’ assets. Multi-factor authentication may protect some payment card transactions, but what about gift cards, for example. Unlike bank-issued credit and debit cards, gift cards are generally not held to strict anti-fraud standards, which is largely why they are a desirable asset among many fraudsters. Illicit vendors selling stolen gift cards have become commonplace on the Deep & Dark Web (DDW) in recent years, leading to an uptick in instances of gift card fraud.

Thinking like a fraudster means considering all of the options available to an attacker and admitting that certain systems or processes may be flawed. Proactively identifying and addressing any weaknesses in existing anti-fraud programs—such as what fraudsters determined are often present within gift card security controls—can help businesses better anticipate and prepare for fraud.

Thinking like a fraudster means considering all of the options available to an attacker and admitting that certain systems or processes may be flawed.

Have eyes and ears on DDW fraud forums

Thinking like a criminal is only one part of this strategy. To accurately anticipate how your company, your peers, or your industry is being targeted, it’s important to have insight into the conversations and behaviours of those perpetuating fraud. Not all organisations are going to have proper visibility into these realms, therefore it’s important to have a trusted partner with eyes and ears on the DDW, for example.

Certain DDW forums focus on fraud, and on these forums, certain trends emerge. For example, discussions related to the lax anti-fraud controls of gift cards eventually manifested in a spike in gift card fraud.

Many fraudsters’ ever-evolving tactics bear little resemblance to the tried-and-true fraud schemes with which most businesses are familiar. Although countless variations of credit card fraud, for example, are generally well-known and well-mitigated in the financial services and retail industries, many businesses continue to incur substantial losses from lesser-known types of fraud. In addition to gift card fraud, refund fraud, health savings account fraud, and rewards point fraud are only a few of many such examples that were initially conceived within the cybercriminal underground before posing a threat to businesses.

The DDW can be a rich source of insight into emerging fraud tactics and schemes. But because accessing and engaging within these online communities can be challenging and risky without the proper expertise and protections, businesses are encouraged to work with reputable intelligence vendors to more effectively, easily, and safely gain visibility into the cybercriminal underground.

Just as fraudsters are extremely resilient, persistent, and resourceful, businesses, too, should seek to emulate these characteristics when fighting fraud. This means approaching fraud from new perspectives, learning about emerging schemes and tactics proactively.

Keep track of regional ties and variations

Analysts have tied different types of fraud certain regions such as Eastern Europe, forcing businesses go to great lengths to gain insight into new schemes and tactics. These types of insights are critical for establishing countermeasures, the most effective of which typically account for the social, cultural, and linguistic nuances known to characterise fraudulent activity originating in certain regions.

But in recent years, new cybercriminal communities and, as a result—new tactics and types of fraud—have quickly emerged in many more regions. Latin America is one such example. While fraudsters in Latin America have long been considered unsophisticated, unorganised, and unlikely to pose any substantial threats to businesses, this community has since evolved substantially. Many businesses that previously had no reason to monitor the Spanish-language cybercriminal underground are now striving to understand and combat threats originating from fraudsters in Latin America. And given that threats and indicators can vary substantially across different regions and communities, keeping track of these variations and new developments is a must for businesses and anti-fraud teams.

Assessment

Just as fraudsters are extremely resilient, persistent, and resourceful, businesses, too, should seek to emulate these characteristics when fighting fraud. This means approaching fraud from new perspectives, learning about emerging schemes and tactics proactively, and seeking third-party services and expertise when necessary. While businesses have little control over the existence of fraud, they can control the extent to which they prepare for and mitigate this ever-evolving threat.

For almost three quarters (73%) of financials services leaders, customers are the main driving force behind their company’s digital transformation, however fear of failure is holding back the implementation of digital projects, with almost three quarters of financials services leaders put off by the costs of failed projects. This comes as no surprise, as seven-in-10 admit to cancelled projects in the last two years, according to Fujitsu’s Digital Transformation PACT Report.

“Financial services firms are under pressure from their customers to deliver greater speed, convenience and personalisation, as well as better customer services,” said Ian Bradbury, CTO Financial Services at Fujitsu UK & Ireland. “Digital transformation is certainly a key strategy in helping banks and insurers achieve this, however, despite the sector going from strength to strength, financial sector firms have undertaken unsuccessful projects and lost money. This has made them nervous about deploying new projects. But we feel that success can be born out of previous unsuccessful projects, as previous failures allow organisations to learn. In an ever-changing market, there is no such thing as permanent success. Organisations must continuously improve, learning from their mistakes along the way.”

Even though over four-in-five (87%) have a clearly defined digital strategy, almost three quarters (73%) admit that their digital transformation projects often aren’t linked to the overarching business strategy. But is this the sole reason UK financial services leaders can’t get to grips with their digital projects?

Realising a digital vision is not just about having the right technology. In order to successfully digitally transform, this research highlights four strategic elements businesses must focus on: People, Actions, Collaboration and Technology – the Digital PACT.

  1. People

While admitting to a problematic skills gap – especially as 80% believe the lack of skills within the business is the biggest hindrance to addressing cybersecurity – it is encouraging to see that over nine-in-10 believe they have a culture of innovation within their organisation. Despite this believe, 87% believe that fear of failure is a hindrance to digital transformation projects. There is therefore a long way to go for financial services companies to truly transform their culture to thrive on innovation. As UK financial services firms are taking measures to increase their access to digital skills and expertise (93%), four-in-five believe attracting ‘digitally native’ staff will be vital to their firms’ success in the next three years, as well as turning towards targeted recruitment (72%) and apprenticeships (50%) to support digital transformation.

  1. Actions

Although having the right processes, attitudes and behaviours within the organisation to ensure digital projects are successful are seen as the least important of the four key elements of digital transformation, 87% are taking specific measures to support collaboration on digital innovation and over two-in-five (43%) are creating networks for employees to share expertise across the business.

  1. Collaboration

Over a quarter (28%) of UK financial services leaders believe collaboration is an important element in realising the company’s digital strategy. While almost four-in-five (78%) turn to technology experts for co-creation, 67% go as far as seeking consultancy and training from start ups and organisations outside their industry.

  1. Technology

Many organisations are already leveraging new technology that will radically change the way they do business. A fifth of financial services leaders believe implementing technology will be the most important factor to realising their digital strategy, with cloud computing and big data and analytics playing a key role in helping drive the financial success of their organisations over the next 10 years.

Bradbury continues: “Historically, financial services firms have been cautious when it comes to innovation. They are working under strict regulations and the very nature of what they do, means that a radical digital transformation project could have a detrimental impact on people’s lives – for example, negatively impacting access to bank accounts or making insurance claims. But this shouldn’t hinder innovation across the sector. Quite the opposite – with the help of external expertise and willingness to implement digital transformation, we can be soon pleasantly surprised at a revamp of the industry. Change doesn’t always come naturally, but the financial sector understands what’s at stake, with 86% admitting that the ability to change will be crucial for the business’ survival in the next five years.”

(Source: Fujitsu)

Just last month Facebook was found to have been providing user data to Cambridge Analytica, which would then allegedly use this data to influence users.

More recently it has been reported that music, and such apps as Spotify, could be providing the Bank of England with data on consumer moods. How far can behavioural data analysis get? Book lists, TV choices and even computer games could also be used to gauge consumer confidence. What are your thoughts on this?

This week Finance Monthly spoke to a couple of experts on this news, who gave their two cents on the matter.

Steve Wilcockson, Industry Manager, MathWorks:

Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England has revealed that researchers are using data from individuals’ Spotify playlist choices and data from games including World of Warcraft to gain insight into public sentiment – information that can be fed into financial models used to reveal important economic indicators such as consumer spending patterns.

Haldane has highlighted the potential of use of alternative data in helping institutions make sense of new sources of information and use it to gain useful insight, in this case into consumer sentiment that feeds economic modelling.

Approaching the anniversary of the global financial crisis reminds us of the critical importance that data and model governance must be impeccable. Alternative data, whether Taylor Swift download metrics, news sentiment derived from text analytics or geolocation-inspired datasets should therefore be used in conjunction with, rather than a replacement for, traditional economic indicators. As the Bank of England has rightly noted, it is also vital to ensure the proper anonymisation and safeguarding of public data, especially in the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytic scandal.

Jacob Gascoine-Becker, Associate Director, Pragma:

Using Spotify data as a guide for consumer sentiment relies on semantic search techniques predicting user intent and meaning. Retailers frequently use these consumer insight tools to analyse social and digital conversations about their brand.  However, the method has increasingly developed a reputation for inaccuracy due to the complexities of language, context and the British love of sarcasm.

At a basic level, it taps into sentiment - words understood as positive or negative and flag a post accordingly. For example, a post that says: “Thanks a lot for delivering my package four days after you promised” is tagged as positive, despite its clearly sarcastic tone. In Pragma’s view, the degree of separation between a sentiment expressed online and one inferred through a song choice will only add to this inaccuracy.

Despite current challenges in automating analysis, retailers wanting to stay on top of perceptions of their brand - and get ahead of operational problems - already pay close attention to online narrative. As the reliability of sentiment analysis improves, it’s easy to see this becoming a widespread leading-indicator of performance, incorporated into management KPIs in the future.”

Behavioural analysis is already used for targeting online. In its most rudimentary and obvious form, shoppers browsing a product on one website will be trailed by relevant banner ads for days afterwards. There are much more subtle ways that e-commerce operators are exploiting behavioural data. Increasingly retailers optimise what consumers see on their websites based on past digital behaviour, even making assumptions about items based on your location, web browser, ISP and so on. Amazon is a perfect example.

In-game behaviour as a confidence barometer is viable, particularly as many role playing games incorporate their own virtual economies. However, the greatest value for economists will surely lie in capturing data from more ubiquitous services, such as social media platforms, offering a more broadly representative consumer cross-section.

We would also love to hear more of Your Thoughts on this, so feel free to comment below and tell us what you think!

Banks are increasingly using your data intelligently and effectively. Let’s find out how far they can go. Julius Abensur, Head of Industry and Financial Services at Relay42, explains.

Technology has advanced at a rapid pace in banking and our demands have changed, making our data – and banks using it properly to benefit us – more important than ever.

Through various utilities, facilities, transactions and experiences, banks have more opportunities to break down traditional barriers to offer us a more seamless experience across channels and outcomes, rather than products and functions. By using our data effectively, they can deliver us a unique journey, based around our personal interests and most frequently-used channels. The benefits to banks are clear; customers who are fully engaged bring an average of 37% more annual revenue to their primary bank than customers who are disengaged.

To achieve the levels of engagement and loyalty we now expect, banks need to ensure they are using our data wisely and responsibly in order to nurture our trust. If banks aren’t using our data to provide us with a better and more valuable user experience, it won’t be long before we stop sharing it altogether. This will only be made easier in light of regulations such as GDPR and PSD2, which are placing stricter rules on how banks use our information.

So how can banks use our data more effectively, while maintaining our trust?

Merging the real and digital worlds

Impending regulation changes are slowly pushing banks and disruptive fintech start-ups to collaborate, rather than compete, and this is opening up a whole new world of opportunities for us as customers. Banks possess a stronghold of customer data ripe for delivering personalised and useful experiences, and by partnering with fintechs who specialise in innovative, agile technologies, they can deliver true value.

For example, let’s say that a customer (we’ll call him Bill) has just paid for dinner at a restaurant with his friends, and they all want to split the cost and pay Bill back. By partnering with the right fintech and sharing customer data across platforms with a smart data platform, the bank can make this repayment process easier by enabling Bill to distribute payment requests through an online chat service via a single link. By using this link, Bill’s friends can then repay him instantly regardless of who they bank with.

By using data management technology to responsibly share data across different platforms, banks can launch intelligent customer experiences and solutions relatively quickly across both the real and the digital world. This offers clear advantages for customers, who can now use more intelligent services to increase convenience. And this is just the beginning.

Connecting with other industries

When it comes to delivering truly beneficial experiences, banks need to be looking beyond the industry they serve. We all have a vast range of interests that can be capitalised upon through the sophisticated use of data, and this can be achieved by connecting with other industries.

Take the travel industry, for instance. As seamless partnerships between payment providers, booking interfaces and airlines become ubiquitous, travel and financial services leaders need to take a sideways glance to carefully choose trusted partners, value propositions and technology.

To translate this into a practical example: Let’s revisit Bill. Bill has a Global Travel Plus credit card, which is issued by his bank and connected to a global airline, granting him rewards and discounts when he travels. The bank has also created a service called the Travel Plus app, which offers relevant recommendations related to Bill’s journeys and behaviours, and is orchestrated by the bank’s customer journey technology.

Through intelligent cross-pollination of insights and data, the bank can deliver a suite of offers based on Bill’s loyalty and customer value, including frequent flyer points and hotel discounts. Then, through contextual retargeting, Bill’s bank can send financially-related recommendations for his next trip to Barcelona, from the best insurance rates to lock-in forward Euro rates. This kind of data-driven personalisation is what we now crave, and simply would not be possible without banks connecting with other platforms and industries.

Stitching data intelligently

Data is undoubtedly the key to delivering the innovative, highly personalised banking experience that we are all seeking. For banks, the benefits are clear - customer retention is around 14% higher for companies that effectively apply big data and analytics to deal with velocity.

However, if banks are to achieve this then they need to make sure they use our data intelligently. As we have explored, using data management technology can go a long way to effectively stick data together to create a single customer view — the foundations for orchestrating right customer experiences — for the right people. Additionally, partnering with companies both inside and outside of the financial sector can open up new opportunities for next-generation loyalty and engagement.

The high street is reeling after a winter of ill health. Toys R Us, Maplin, House of Fraser, Claire’s: it seems that even stalwarts of the retail landscape aren’t immune to rising rents, the burgeoning ecommerce market and wavering consumer confidence. Below Finance Monthly gains special insight from Andrew Watts, Founding Partner, KHWS, The Brand Commerce Agency, on the impact behavioural science can have on high street performance.

Many other household names appear on the brink of crashing. The question must now be, is the high-street blight another blip or could it this time be terminal?

Nowhere are the symptoms more obvious than casual dining chains like Prezzo, Carluccio’s and Jamie’s Italian. These eateries and others like them have enjoyed the benefits of the booming experience economy in recent years, but not anymore.

Their current troubles are based in low consumer confidence which started with the financial crash almost a decade ago. As real-term income has dropped, and the cost of raw materials increased, consumers have become even more selective about how they spend their disposable income. Retail therapy is no longer proving the consumer tonic that it once was, and even the experience economy is under pressure. A nice experience is no longer enough; spending must result in a clear benefit and value for money.

The homogenised nature of casual dining is a sound example. The majority of chains are backed by private equity, so scale and profit are a key part of their basic business strategy. As a consequence, each brand offers similar mediocre food and a mirror-image dining experience. It’s become harder to charm consumers into splashing out and coming back. Add rising prices to the mix, and people can be forgiven for dining out less.

What’s unfolding in casual dining is symptomatic of a wider malaise on the high street, but this trauma needn’t be fatal. In casual dining, we can see the possible remedies that can be used to salve other areas of retail - a natural downsizing of the market coupled with stronger brand differentiation.

Understanding consumer behaviour is of fundamental importance to succeeding in this landscape. Establishing how and why spending decisions are made will empower brands to tailor their marketing messages accordingly. Behavioural science-led marketing techniques are now enabling brands to do just this, something that has not previously been possible.

Working in partnership with Durham University Business School, we examined the hardwired short-cuts – known as heuristics – that everyone uses to make decisions. We then identified and reframed the nine most relevant to purchase decisions; we refer to them as Sales Triggers.

For casual dining brands, there are two Sales Triggers that are particularly relevant and could prove the cure for the current problems ailing them: Brand Budgeting and Less Means More. This means using marketing messaging to demonstrate real value in a crowded marketplace (Brand Budgeting) and also offering something different or exclusive that enhances the experience when dining (Less Means More).

Despite the seemingly dismal outlook on the high street, some retailers are bucking the trend. Grocery discounters like Aldi and Lidl are triumphing because of their successful use of the Brand Budgeting and Less Means More Sales Triggers. There are some success stories in fashion retail, too. FatFace and Ted Baker have done well in the past quarter, posting robust Christmas sales. This is down to two things: a good product range and a strong reputation. This demonstrates their use of two Sales Trigger. FatFace uses Choice Reduction to simplify information and choice, so people don’t suffer from overload and default to their current behaviour. Ted Baker utilises the obvious truth, communicating well-held positive views of the brand’s heritage, to provide people with information that they are unconsciously seeking to confirm their beliefs.

Flourishing retailers are those who invest in understanding the key Sales Triggers that inform the purchasing behaviour of their customer base, and tailor their service output, products, tech and shopping environment accordingly. High-street brands seeking to replicate and sustain such successes can then use these insights to inform their marketing strategy. This differs from sector to sector, but can be clarified by a behavioural science-led approach which can inform marketing and ultimately present an offering and point of difference that will boost retailer longevity.

There’s no quick fix, but with the right sort of changes, the current retail retrenchment doesn’t need to be a terminal issue for the high street. Gaining a deeper understanding through behavioural science of how shoppers could help cure the pressures on the high street.

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Finance Monthly is a comprehensive website tailored for individuals seeking insights into the world of consumer finance and money management. It offers news, commentary, and in-depth analysis on topics crucial to personal financial management and decision-making. Whether you're interested in budgeting, investing, or understanding market trends, Finance Monthly provides valuable information to help you navigate the financial aspects of everyday life.
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