Enhancing intelligence: The key to tackling fraud at its source

To effectively combat fraud, counter-fraud teams need to become proactive, rather than reactive.  

In our Combatting Fraud webinar, a panel of financial crime experts emphasised the importance of tackling the fraud problem upstream through intelligence-led and strategic investments in technology, moving away from reacting to individual cases after they have occurred.

You can rewatch the webinar here.  

While the threat of fraud is pulling rank with cyber in the boardroom, there remain hurdles in acquiring the necessary skills and resources to tackle it effectively. 

Focusing counter fraud resources

A proactive approach to counter fraud involves directing finite resources where they have the most impact, identifying and proactively tackling the networks and ‘kingpins’ upstream rather than just reacting to individual cases of fraud.  

Effective data sharing between departments and organisations, facilitated by system interoperability, is crucial to pooling resources and information to identify the origin of fraud campaigns based on concurrent fraud activity, reports, and data sources. This cooperative approach is essential to tackle the growing scope and scale of fraud, given that three in 4 frauds are cross-border in nature and 4 in 5 are enabled by technology.  

While APIs provide the technical pathway, implementing data-sharing agreements between various groups is instrumental to collaboration, providing the necessary legal structure for seamless information sharing and data-led decision-making.  

“Fundamentally, I think where data sharing initiatives have fallen short is by not having a clear purpose behind the sharing,” Ian Dyson QPM, counter fraud expert, told us previously. 

“If you have a clear purpose – such as being able to better find vulnerabilities in our systems that are enabling fraudsters to extract money – you can narrow the scope of the data sharing and place some constraints around it; there will be a better and more quantifiable outcome.” 

Sharing and combining fraud data and information between multiple sources provides counter-fraud teams with the ability to apply analytics capabilities more effectively to uncover anomalies and unusual patterns, that could offer a breadcrumb trail to a source of fraud.  

Armed with this intelligence, proactive action can follow. This could include disrupting fraud attempts before they take place, implementing process improvements to enhance counter-fraud mechanisms, and providing information to support awareness campaigns.  

Final thoughts

Moving towards proactive counter-fraud strategies involves making strategic investments in intelligence management technology, effective legal frameworks, and collaboration between counter-fraud teams, departments, and organisations. 

Collaborative partnerships with industry, international partners, and local authorities are also crucial to addressing the scale and scope of the fraud threat. At the same time, continued investments must be made into strategic, joined-up public and corporate awareness campaigns to tackle lower-level volume fraud.

Focused on detection and prevention, Clue helps law enforcement agencies, corporations and public sector organisations manage intelligence and investigations into threats including fraud, money laundering and corruption, and bribery. Learn more.