CRIF Joins Movement to Shine a Spotlight on Fraud

International Fraud Awareness Week kicks off Nov. 13, 2022 worldwide. The war in Ukraine, global food shortages, and political and economic uncertainty have created huge challenges for businesses, organisations, and individuals across the world, not least the threat of fraud. History suggests that the worse the global economic climate gets, the greater the likely increase in fraud. The 2007-09 recession, for example, saw fraudulent insurance claims rise 17% in one year.

In the banking and insurance sector, fraud can take many forms, including application fraud, claims farming, false police reports, identity thefts and ghost broking. Now, according to the Claims Consortium Group, in the UK insurance market a 40% hike in fraud has been projected as we move into 2023.

The seriousness of the global fraud problem is why CRIF is participating in International Fraud Awareness Week (November 13-19, 2022) as an official supporter to promote anti-fraud awareness and education. The movement, known commonly as Fraud Week, champions the need to proactively fight fraud and help safeguard business and investments from the growing fraud problem.

CRIF has been supporting the UK insurance market for over 25 years and has built up solid know-how in fraud patterns, use cases and fraud prevention. It is helping the insurance industry combat fraud globally with its Sherlock suite of solutions. Through this, organisations can identify hidden fraudulent connections and assess risk to investigate 100% of their claims in just 3 seconds. Sherlock combines artificial intelligence, proprietary machine learning techniques, an insurance fraud analytics engine and expert rules.

Sherlock uses automation to verify identity documents in real time. It also performs end-to-end validation checks with ease and assigns a fraud risk score which represents whether a given applicant is fraudulent or comes under the radar of being fraudulent. The fraud risk score helps insurance companies to significantly speed up its ability to identify and respond to fraud attacks.

For financial providers, including banks and alternative lenders, CRIF offers a fully secure, digital onboarding process for services including opening a bank account. Through this, they are helping providers to optimise the first contact with a new customers, make the onboarding as smooth and engaging as possible and ensure those who they are accepting onto their system are legitimate. CRIF also delivers yearly workshops, meetings and proof of concepts to help clients discover new types of fraud, and test new solutions on the market.

Sara Costantini, Regional Director for the UK & Ireland at CRIF said, “Fraud has become a pandemic in its own right across many countries. While Fraud Awareness Week is a great opportunity to raise awareness of this threat, this is an all-year-round issue. We encourage the financial services industry and other organisations to work together to clamp down on the issue, utilising the latest solutions and technology to help protect their customers as well as their business.”

ACFE president and CEO Bruce Dorris, J.D., CFE, CPA, said that the support of organisations around the world helps make Fraud Week an effective tool in raising anti-fraud awareness.

“Fraud is an issue that unfortunately affects people from all walks of life around the world and it takes many forms,” said Dorris. “Whether it’s a trusted employee stealing from a small business, or organised rings of fraudsters targeting seniors in our community, most people know someone who’s been victimised by fraud. That’s why it’s so important for organisations to join in this fight together in order to raise awareness during this week. It is a serious problem that requires a proactive approach toward preventing it and educating people is the first step.”

For more information about increasing awareness and reducing the risk of fraud during International Fraud Awareness Week, visit FraudWeek.com.