Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced today that it has strengthened its Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud solution to help U.S. and U.K. financial institutions prevent crimes tied to cash management activities.
The latest release of the Wiz Sentri Anti-fraud solution helps institutions identify the precursors to cash management fraud before losses are incurred by the institution or its customers. This unprecedented development fundamentally shifts the strategy for combating fraud and represents a true third generation financial crime control solution.
The Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud solution can help both U.S. and U.K. institutions monitor continuously and in real-time for criminal activity such as account hijacking, kiting, insider fraud, ATM fraud, counterfeited check and identity theft-based scenarios. As a result, institutions are better able to prevent such fraud before it occurs and stop funds from ever leaving the organization.
"Deteriorating financial conditions in 2008 coupled with the emergence of new payments types and the growth of electronic payments opened up new opportunities for payment fraud," according to the Association of Financial Professionals' (AFP's) 2009 Payments and Fraud Control Survey. More than 70 percent of U.S. organizations surveyed by the AFP said they experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2008. And organizations that suffered a financial loss as a result of wire fraud generally said they did so because they did not follow best practices and/or neglected to execute their own business rules related to wire transactions. In the U.K., APACS also noted a 185 percent increase in online banking fraud in the first six months of 2008 when compared to the same timeframe in 2007.
By utilizing the Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud solution, an institution can better identify accounts, customers and transactions that are most susceptible to fraud surrounding cash management activities, ranking the relative risk exposure each entity presents. Using the solution, an institution can then establish profiles for these accounts based on historical patterns of transactional activity. If Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud identifies an unusual transaction, or set of transactions, based on the account's previous transactional history, the solution alerts the institution. The institution may then be able to place a hold on the transaction and further investigate for potential fraud before any funds are released.
The solution also facilitates and helps automate investigations by providing a framework for gathering and managing important forensic information. By recording and storing relevant application data across the institution in a compressed and digitally-signed format, Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud can provide a clear chain of custody of the fraudulent activity that may be used as forensic evidence in a court of law.
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud solution utilizes a patent-pending technology that seamlessly plugs into an institution's existing network, which can result in a faster implementation at a fraction of the cost of traditional monitoring systems. The platform can help institutions monitor legacy and Web-based systems for suspicious activity using a single set of services. This unique architecture may be of particular value to large institutions with heavy investments in legacy systems. It also enables the swift development of anti-fraud rules to help keep up with a rapidly-changing world of fraudulent schemes and allows the solution to be scalable across large enterprises.
"Today's financial criminal knows no boundaries when it comes to targeting financial institutions," said Todd Cooper, vice president and general manager of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Financial Intelligence Unit. "International, regional, and community banks, credit unions, security firms and other financial services institutions are all fair game in these individuals' efforts to commit wire transfer, ACH (Automated Clearing House) and other types of cash management fraud. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Wiz Sentri solution can help all institutions stop financial criminals before they are successful, avoiding considerable financial and reputational losses in the process."