Your Guide to Fraud Solutions: Down with The White Collars
White collar criminals are often viewed as sleek-talking, Ocean’s Eleven archetypes, or classier (maybe even handsomer) versions of the common street thief—a level of romanticism that Hollywood has afforded white collar crime. In fact, that’s pretty much what a white collar criminal is: a common thief in a fancy suit.
If you’ve seen enough of white collar crime in the endless slew of Hollywood films on finance, you might be surprised to know that it’s much more common in real life. In fact, from community retail banks to credit unions, institutions have adapted several creative ways of fighting off fraud.
This is especially true in the advent of modern technology, when it’s so much easier to steal whole accounts at the press of one button, and what’s ironic is that you don’t even need a fancy suit to do it. The traditional forged signatures, forged endorsements, altered checks, counterfeit checks, and check kiting have been elevated to a whole new arena—the worldwide web. Fortunately, in the battle of technologies and the emergence of convenient online banking, software has subsequently been developed to specifically counteract scammers lurking on the web.
Uninsured Deposits
If your company is trying to get you to skip on paying taxes, it’s time you raised a few questions. Often, illegitimate companies persuade their customers not to pay their taxes, especially if they rake in significantly high interest rates. This results in uninsured deposits, and you are unable to acquire insurance or protection on your investments.
The fraud here seems pretty straightforward, and it is. The reason it happens, though, is that federal banks and other financial institutions have no way of checking on these companies because the latter are often unregistered and unauthorized. The lesson here? Do your background checks. Also, no legitimate company would ever discourage you from paying taxes—that alone should give you a heads up.
Credit Card Fraud
The countless individuals carrying around a shiny, magnetized piece of plastic in their pockets have now become a rather expansive market for credit card fraud. In fact, credit card fraud is one of the most common scams out there, basically because almost everyone now holds a credit card (or two, or even three). For the many people who have their personal information accessible on that card, it’s often a nasty shock to find that someone else has completely stolen their identity.
Credit card holders are no stranger to the potential for identity theft (or at least, they shouldn’t be). Financial institutions need to be on the constant lookout for unreported stolen cards, BIN attacks, card number skimming, balance transfers, etc., as well as have a set protocol for dealing with these anomalies.
Loan Application Falsifications
Basically, this happens when a person needs a loan and decided to lie to qualify for it. It’s also a common type of fraud, especially for mortgage of equity loans. The sad thing about this is that some companies even encourage falsification of information, and go as far as to convince their clients to come up with bogus documents.
End to End Fraud Coverage
So what’s the solution to white collar crime? Sadly, there’s no one-size-fits-all fix to all the frauds, but fortunately, banks have shaped up their game. There are now detection systems for financial institutions developed to scan any and all ATM operations for potential sleaze. This is good, as detection is often in itself a problem in developing fraud solutions for retail banks that are worth a dime.
Banks are also turning to highly advanced business intelligence software that can combat reduce check fraud at the tellers window as well as the ATM machines. Detections systems are also becoming largely dependent on the growing number of digitized documents and signatures, increasing the need for efficient document imaging services for banks.
No doubt the rise in this kind of scamming has prompted an equally creative bite back from financial institutions. Banks are now investing in the latest software—fraud solutions for retail banks that will enable them to evolve legislation and regulation, enhance customer experience and improve acquisition and retention.
