FIs Need to Update Their Crime-Fighting Tactics

Hackers and cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated by the day, if not the hour or the minute, but too many financial institutions are holding on to their old way of attempting to deal with risk, an approach that could leave them more vulnerable to attacks, both in frequency and in size.

Part of the issue, it seems, is the penchant by FIs to keep transaction data and risk analysis information in silos—for example, anti-money laundering tactics are kept under the compliance umbrella while fraud is handled as a security breach.

“Removing the silos around anti-fraud and AML operations allows risk teams to get the most out of their data and optimize their compliance, monitoring and anti-fraud efforts synchronously in a converged FRAML approach,” according to the April 2022 edition of “FRAML Payments Guide: How To Deploy A Holistic Risk Hub,” a PYMNTS and Featurespace collaboration.

The “FRAML Payments Guide: How To Deploy A Holistic Risk Hub” reveals how an integrated approach to fighting fraud and money laundering can improve risk management outcomes. The playbook provides a quick-start guide to identifying cyber-risk vulnerabilities and noncompliance risks and explores the tools to help FIs bolster their fraud prevention strategies.

“The elimination of technology debt is urgent,” the Payments Guide says. “Money launderers and fraudsters are utilizing increasingly complex methods to compromise and exploit consumers’ data and accounts for money laundering and other crimes.”

FIs are also often hampered by outdated or inefficient tools that can’t assign accurate risk scores to legitimate consumer behaviors. These can amplify the risk for the FIs and their customers, especially as the FIs get bigger. Another issue: maintaining compliance once it’s been achieved.

“For neobanks and FinTechs, the FRAML approach allows an acceleration of innovation,” according to the Payments Guide. “A lack of technical debt makes it easier to implement a modern, best practices approach based on the tactics and lessons learned from incumbent FIs.

“Risk compliance has become more complicated in the digital age. Not only are the challenges to AML and anti-fraud success more complex but regulatory standards are also evolving to match the acceleration of payments technology and its corresponding risk,” the Guide says.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is encouraging FIs, FinTechs and neobanks to consider modernizing its AML and anti-fraud strategies, but the payments landscape may soon undergo another significant change: new governmental compliance mandates are being developed globally, and America’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued new AML priorities that impact nonbank financial institutions in 2021.

“As technology evolves, neobanks and FinTechs that must maintain anti-fraud and AML compliance in a world characterized by always evolving regulations, needing agile risk monitoring and mitigation tools to effectively manage long-term growth,” the Payments Guide says.

For more news on how banks and FinTechs are fighting financial crime, download the April 2022 edition of “FRAML Payments Guide: How To Deploy A Holistic Risk Hub.”