When it comes to fraud protection, there are many tools and solutions. With so many options on the marketplace, it can be hard to know what you need. Ideally, to protect your financial institution, you should work with a company who is committed to being your partner and guiding you toward the right solutions. When choosing a fraud protection partner, look for the following:
Custom Solutions
Your financial institution has its own unique set of clients, and you may offer different products or services than your competitors. As a result, you don’t need a one-size-fits-all solution to fraud protection. You need a solution that is customized to your particular needs.
For instance, if you have a lot of business clients, you need solutions that address the specific concerns related to commercial banking. Similarly, if you have a lot of customers who use safe deposit boxes, you need safe deposit management tools. On the other side of the coin, if you don’t have a lot of commercial clients or safe deposit box users, you shouldn’t have to pay for those services. In other words, you want a fraud protection partner who lets you pick and choose exactly what you need.
A Focus on Customer Experience
Fraud protection is designed to protect your customers, but at the same time, it shouldn’t hinder their ability to use their bank account. If your fraud detection software is flagging too many customer transactions as fraudulent, that can become tiresome for you and your clients, and ultimately, they may take their business elsewhere. To prevent that from happening, you need a fraud protection partner who can balance protection and customer experience.
Machine Learning
To strike that balance between fraud detection and customer satisfaction, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, is essential. These tools don’t just look for a single indicator of fraud. Instead, they take into account multiple data points to get to know your customers and their habits. That helps to prevent the system from suggesting fraud when it really isn’t present.
Intuitive Tools
You and your staff use your fraud protection tools every day, and you need them to be intuitive and relatively easy to use. Ask prospective fraud protection companies to show you demos of their products. For instance, let’s say you are investing in a workflow application that identifies potentially fraudulent checks and other debits and presents them to your staff for a final decision. To save time and money, that tool should present the checks in a way that is easy for your staff to understand and utilize. While a small learning curve should be expected with any new software, an intuitive user interface is essential.
Real-Time Monitoring
In addition to being easy to use, your fraud protection tools should offer real-time monitoring. For instance, you may want a dashboard that gives you detailed information about fraud risks based on types of transactions, branches, or areas. Then, you can easily determine where you should be focusing your time and resources.
Tech Support
Once you find the right fraud protection tools, you need to think about tech support. What happens if a certain application isn’t working correctly? Does the fraud protection company offer tech support online and over the phone? Can they commit to getting back to you within a certain time frame? As you look at different fraud protection companies, make sure to ask critical questions. Timely tech support is essential when you’re processing these important transactions.
Thought Leader
When you’re choosing someone to help with your fraud protection needs, you want someone who is an expert in their industry. You need a partner who understands the current threats and is constantly learning about new fraud risks. To that end, you should speak with the company about their expertise. Before you call potential candidates, you may want to look at their website. Is it full of timely and useful information? Similarly, you may want to find out if the owner or manager of the company has published any magazine articles or online posts. That indicates that the company is a thought leader who has the knowledge and experience to really help you.
At SQN Banking Systems, we offer all these advantages and many more to our customers. We believe that in the world of finance, fraud protection is absolutely necessary, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. We’re committed to making fraud protection easy for our clients. To learn more, contact us today.