Wells Fargo is to work with US bank trade groups the Financial Services Roundtable and Bits to pilot an Identity Theft Assistance Centre (Itac) for financial crime victims.
The idea is to provide a single, shared point of contact for victims of ID theft to recover their financial identities and restore their credit ratings. Once a crime has been reported, the customer's bank will forward details to the Itac which will contact the victim, and all other companies where the victim has an account and additional fraud may have occurred.
Steve Bartlett, president and CEO of The Financial Services Roundtable, comments: "With Itac, victims will only have to report the crime once, saving them from having to spend hours retelling their story to multiple departments in multiple companies."
The Itac pilot is expected to be operational by May 2004. Wells Fargo has agreed to conduct the pilot with the support of Roundtable and Bits member institutions.
Dick Kovacevich, chairman and CEO, Wells Fargo says: "Our mutual goal is to put a model in place that will help streamline the process for customers simply and quickly as well as help curb this crime in the future."