MoneyGuard - Reducing the costs of fraud prevention for banks

If, like me, you've been left in the position of being without your credit or debit card following it being blocked by your bank you’ll understand how inconvenient, embarrassing and stressful this can be. This happened to me about ten days before Christmas. As the panic of leaving my festive shopping until the very last-minute set in, terrible weather rolled in potentially delaying or halting any deliveries, on top of which my somewhat overzealous bank then blocked my bank card due to ‘suspicious behaviour’. This ‘suspicious behaviour’ turned out to be multiple transactions detected over several days. You’re probably thinking what I did at the time, that's it's Christmas, traditionally the time of multiple transactions!

At the time I had few choices other than a physical trip to my bank's high-street branch, which lucky for me, isn’t yet a charity shop. While this was some time ago, this issue remains a flaw in terms of how banks manage cybersecurity risks with customers. When it happened, I distinctly remember discussing the implications of having my bank card blocked while I was out of the country, perhaps in a relatively undeveloped region of the world. How easy would it be to get it reinstated, or even communicate with my bank, and crucially would I be left in a situation where I was without access to my money?

As banks move increasingly towards a 'digital first' approach, resulting in the closures of bricks and mortar branches a shift towards new innovative solutions is happening.

MoneyGuard, now part of JT’s Mobile Intelligence division is one such innovative solution, that neatly fits into a banks payment and cybersecurity framework providing a seamless platform from where automated messages and self-service options can be managed between customers and banks, with a firm focus on fraud alerts. These alerts are deployed in real-time over a wide range of communication channels including SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, email and IVR. Crucially the alerts are two-way, enabling a bank to instantly deploy a message to an account holder prompting a reply from them, confirming or denying a transaction. Depending upon the response the bank can take whatever measures necessary to ensure optimal user experience and protection against fraud.

MoneyGuards’ automated system greatly speeds up fraud resolution, reducing costs for banks and improves customer experiences at a time when banks are increasingly facing overwhelming volumes of fraud alerts as more of us turn to mobile banking. False positives are a huge challenge for fraud teams with rates routinely in the mid to high 90th percentile within financial services. Adding resources can alleviate pressure in the short term, but it’s not a sustainable approach given that labour costs are a significant contributor to the costs of financial crime. There’s also a consensus in the industry that AI assisted fraud will significantly turn up the dial in terms of fraud alert volumes and the sophistication of scams in the coming years, meaning that meeting the challenge cost effectively will demand smarter automated solutions. 

MoneyGuard is already helping to secure many millions of customers accounts around the world, who already receive fraud alerts. Providing a seamless interface between mobile channels and transactional/banking systems, MoneyGuard not only provides cost effective fraud prevention, but also added value through a raft of self-service options where account holders can manage transaction limits through to delivering omni-channel marketing and promotions for organisations.

As the shift towards digitisation continues with banks and money services normalising a purely digital experience for customers, they create new opportunities for cyber criminals and fraudsters to exploit. For them to stay competitive and retain customers they must ensure that the provision of cyber-security and fraud prevention measures do not impede and add unnecessary friction to user experiences which is the primary differentiator between brands. JT’s Mobile Intelligence is where cybersecurity meets user experience - to find out more about MoneyGuard visit: /JTMoneyGuard