Can your AML compliance solution also help you combat internal fraud?

PWC’s 2020 Global Economic Crime & Fraud Survey reports that fraud and economic crime rates remain at record highs, with roughly an even split between fraud committed by internal and external perpetrators. Cifas, an independent, not-for-profit organisation working to reduce fraud and related financial crime in the UK, cited dishonest action by staff to obtain a benefit by theft or deception as the highest type of fraud filed with them in 2020. Account misconduct also increased slightly with 24 cases in 2019 and 26 in 2020.

Fraud in the UK continues to be a hot topic. The recent UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2022 states, “Banks and card companies prevented £1.4 billion in unauthorised fraud in 2021. This represents incidents that were detected and prevented by firms and is equivalent to 65.3p in every £1 of attempted fraud being stopped.” The report goes on to explore how the continuing impact of Covid-19 has reshaped the fraud landscape in the past 18 to 24 months.

It appears that the effects of the pandemic (more of us are working from home, spending longer online, and doing more internet shopping) have resulted in certain types of fraud falling while others have risen. There was a 7 per cent decrease in unauthorised financial fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques in 2021 compared to 2020, while Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams were up in 2021 with gross losses of £583.2 million, compared with £420.7 million in 2020.

With working from home becoming more the norm since the start of the Global pandemic, organisations have had to look for ways to mitigate the potential associated internal fraud risks, often on a tight budget.

While your AML compliance solution will be monitoring transactions for suspicious activity, it’s beneficial to also turn this lens inward to look for instances of internal fraud. Jade Thirdeye’s configurable rules engine goes beyond AML/CFT compliance to also empower organisations to monitor and spot the warning signs of internal and external fraud. Having a solution flexible enough to address multiple requirements gives you the benefit of dealing with a single, known vendor without the need for retraining or using multiple interfaces, all while getting more value from your solution.

Examples of internal fraud that our customers monitor using Jade ThirdEye include:

• Colleagues transacting on their own account: Identifying where a colleague may be processing a transaction on their own account. This is often a breach of policy in many financial organisations due to the risk of abuse.
• Unexpected Colleague Activity: Detecting unexpected activity by colleagues, such as removing an account block, processing a withdrawal from a deceased or dormant account, looking at customer records more than usual, or records you wouldn’t expect.
• Unexpected Account Activity: Monitoring changes to accounts that may suggest an attempt to circumvent controls, such as repeatedly changing an account address, particularly on either side of a withdrawal.
• Unexpected Relationships: Repeated transactions between specific colleagues and customers, specifically at different branches.
• Activity at Unusual Times: Colleagues accessing systems at unusual times, such as late at night or on weekends.

These rules are by no means exhaustive and an organisation may have other rules it will wish to add to better suit its risk profile. Instead of being restricted to a predefined set of rules and facing expensive developers costs to customise the rules, the configurable nature of Jade ThirdEye means that the ability to review, adapt and configure new rules are all at an organisation’s fingertips.

While we have concentrated on internal fraud in this blog, our Skipton Building Society case study takes a more detailed look at external fraud monitoring, and how Jade ThirdEye helped the Building Society to not only stay compliant with AML regulations but also help combat fraud and protect vulnerable customers.

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