Identity theft is one of the fastest growing types of consumer fraud. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has estimated that, during 2003, almost ten million Americans discovered they were the victims of identity theft with a total cost to businesses and consumers of over $50 billion.

In the United Kingdom, APACS reports that the latest card fraud figures show Internet fraud accounts for a quarter of all losses. In Asia, many countries have already embarked on legislating the use of stronger authentication measures to combat online and identity theft and fraud.

Michael Aaron IBM's Banking Solutions Executive for Financial Services Sector, Asia Pacific stated "IBM believes that our partnership wit Fraud Management Technologies will offer Banks and Financial Institutions the ability to immediately respond to their online banking fraud challenges with a proven solution which provides a real-time customer friendly detection capability supporting multiple 2-factor authentication options. Banking clients across the region are demanding such a solution."

FMT's CEO, Kostas Siourthas said: "We have been working with IBM for the past year in helping us to successfully integrate our solution to their leading platforms, conduct testing and optimise our solution so that we can deliver it as a plug-n-play, off the shelf appliance to our clients. We are now engaging with IBM to communicate the value of this partnership and proposition to Financial Institutions across the region."

FraudAlert is being offered as a hosted solution or as an appliance and resides within the bank's secure network, giving the client choice and comfort in deployment environment, enabling rapid implementation.