New anti-fraud technology solutions emerge, but companies must ensure cooperation between compliance and anti-fraud departments, experts say

Bridging the gap between compliance and anti-fraud departments is one of the main challenges that companies face in their fight against fraud and money laundering, given that there is currently very little integration between the two, according to Deloitte Romania experts.

If a financial crime occurs, the two departments will usually require much of the same information, in order to take the appropriate actions and measures. However, without having the full picture from both sides, this becomes difficult both from an investigation and a cost perspective, experts explained.

“There are remarkable benefits to strengthening the collaboration between the compliance and anti-fraud functions in a financial institution. Fighting against perpetrators from both a fraud and an AML perspective and covering complex schemes such as CEO Fraud would only be possible by virtue of a strong bond between both functions,” stated Ioana Ungureanu, Forensic Manager, Deloitte Romania.

Criminal groups are well aware that they can easily recruit a new money mule at any time, so companies need to raise awareness on this risk among their employees, which have served without their volition or consciousness as money laundering intermediaries for criminals, underlined SAS specialists.

“Start adopting a proactive approach as opposed to a reactive one. Stay connected to the risk references to be able to identify new threats and address them effectively,” said Andreas Kitsios, Senior Business Solutions Manager, SAS Greece & Eastern Europe, Fraud & Security Intelligence.

Anti-fraud technology has become an important investment, as over 60% of organizations say the increased volume of transactions they can review with data analytics is beneficial to their anti-fraud programs, according to ACFE’s 2020 Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report.

A typical fraud case lasts 14 months before detection and causes a loss of over $8,000/month, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) 2020 Report to the Nations. When considering today’s financial landscape, where transactions happen under one second, and the current age of economic turmoil that COVID-19 has caused on a global scale, these challenges and risks become all the more threatening, underlined Deloitte Romania and SAS experts in a series of webinars on fraud detection, anti-money laundering (AML) and use of analytics for these fields. However, there are reasons to be optimistic, as 55% of organizations expect to invest more in anti-fraud technology over the next two years, according to ACFE’s 2020 Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report, and new approaches to fraud prevention emerge, combining rules-based systems with machine learning and AI-based fraud detection systems that enable the identification of thousands of fraud patterns.