Because many banks and other financial services institutions today offer similar products with comparable perks and benefits, the real differentiator for many consumers is the customer experience: how easy it is to access important account information through mobile apps and online banking platforms, how quickly customer service can resolve issues, and how safe customers’ finances are from fraud.  

According to a survey conducted by The Motley Fool, security and fraud protection is the third most important factor when choosing a bank. Ninety-six percent of consumers state security and fraud protection is either “somewhat” or “very” important, just behind quality of customer service (97%) and low fees on checking and other accounts (96.5%).  

Coupled with this, fraud against financial institutions is on the rise. According to a report from TransUnion, digital fraud attacks against financial institutions rose 109% in the United States in the first four months of 2021 compared to the last four months of 2020. Globally, these attacks rose 149% in that same period for the financial sector. 

Fraud can devastate the retail banking customer experience. Issues such as identity theft, stolen funds, and other fraud attacks can take months to recover from and trust between the bank and customer can be destroyed. To retain existing customers and attract new account holders, banks must take action to fight the rising threat of fraud.  

Real-time alerts enable quicker issue resolution 

Fraud can take many forms, all of which can put stress on the relationship between banks and your customers. But when you’re alerted to account takeover scenarios in real time, you can act with more speed and make smarter, data-driven decisions, helping mitigate the impact that fraud has on the customer experience. 

Some examples of the types of insights you may want to see include: 

• Repeated failed logins 
• Change of login credentials 
• Change of address 
• Moving large sums of money out of an account 
• Disabled account alerts 

If you can be alerted to suspicious patterns quickly, you can turn all online activity into data that feeds your fraud analysis and prevention tools. With more insights, including the ability to see scenarios from the user’s point of view, you can mitigate fraud more effectively.  

Add real-time, digital CX insights to your existing fraud tools for a more complete picture 

To help financial services institutions proactively identify and mitigate fraud, Acoustic offers powerful digital customer experience insights through Tealeaf by Acoustic. By monitoring online sessions and how consumers interact with digital properties, Tealeaf can detect anomalies in the customer experience that may be a signal of fraud and alert the appropriate IT, security, and fraud prevention teams. In fact, Tealeaf has proven to be faster at detecting fraud than rule-based systems for some retail banks.  

Working in conjunction with your existing fraud monitoring and detection tools, here’s how Tealeaf can help. 

Detect Abnormal Activity: Activities such as multiple password resets from multiple IP addresses, large withdrawals or transfers of cash, and other abnormal activity is detected through artificial intelligence (AI) based on the user’s normal activity. You can become aware of fraudulent activity in real time or post-mortem. 

Report Impact: Sometimes, attempted fraudsters will access personally identifiable information (PII) so they can leverage it later. No data may have changed on the backend, making it difficult to understand what the true impact may have been. With Tealeaf, you can see what information was displayed and what actions the fraudster took or attempted to take so you can understand the real consequences of the breach. 

Take Remedial Action: When an attack does take place, you must notify all affected parties, but if you don’t know what information was disclosed, you need to notify your entire customer base. This could cost your bank customers, significant funds, and even its reputation. But with Tealeaf constantly monitoring all actions taken on your digital properties, you can understand the extent of the attack and take action with only the affected parties.  

Fraud prevention is so critical not only for your bottom line but also for retaining your customers and their trust. To learn more about how Tealeaf can help your organization optimize your digital customer experience while mitigating fraud, get in touch with us today!