eFunds Corporation has launched its next-generation fraud detection service to help financial institutions monitor new account openings and guard against identity theft.
FraudFinder enables users to run consumer checks on new customers, including social security number, address, phone number and driver's licence to verify identity.
A key feature is the ability to search for matching data on inquiries made nationwide in the past 30 days. If a match is found, the financial institution is alerted the next day. In addition, if confirmed fraudulent data is found on the FraudFinder network and matches any new account inquiries, the system's hot list notifies the financial institution the next day.
FraudFinder also accesses eFunds' DebitBureau - a debit database containing contributions from 90,000 financial institution locations and 82,000 retail locations. The information includes account inquiries, openings and closures as well as returned cheque information and cheque order histories.
Nancy Johnson, retail risk operations manager at U.S. Bank, comments: "The FraudFinder service has been instrumental in lowering our fraud losses at the new-accounts desk. We expect that these new features will provide an even greater return on our investment."
According to the FBI, identity theft is continuing to increase with 500,000 reported victims last year and 750,000 actual victims.