France Takes Unwelcome Spot at Top of Europe’s Fraud Loss Table

European countries vie for various sports prizes, but one prize no one wants has just been claimed by France. In terms of the highest card fraud losses for 2012, France is at the top of the league — edging out longtime champion the UK. As revealed in FICO’s updated map...

FICO World Video: Mobility and Customer Engagement Emerge as Hot Topics

FICO World 2013 kicked off today in Miami, where more than 650 bankers, retailers and other business leaders gathered to explore the conference’s theme, Power Shift: Big Data Analytics and the Customer Revolution. The four-day conference features more than 80 presentations by FICO Labs experts and 60 organizations from around...

Fake Identities — Not Too Hard to Swallow

Last week Twitter took the unprecedented step of suspending the account of one Santiago Swallow, who was one of the defining contributors to social media in recent years…or was he? Less than four weeks ago, I was presenting at the FICO-sponsored Fraud Conference in London about authentication as the new...

FICO World Preview: Closing the Risk and Fraud Gaps

As the hero in the cult 1960s television program The Prisoner proclaimed: “I am not a number. I am a free man!” Of course, he wasn’t — he was Number 6, a prisoner in a very Big Brother village prison. Like Number 6, today’s banking customers complain that banks have...

FICO World Preview: Operational Risk - The Intersection of Fraud and Compliance

Banks worldwide have a “Know Your Customer” imperative, which extends not only to risk and marketing but to fraud as well. But what about knowing your staff? In markets where unemployment is high and those employed face more limited options to change jobs or reap fiscal rewards, you start to...

Fight Fraud - Think Like Bond

For a long time now, those in the security and fraud mitigation fraternity have been cautioning people not to unwittingly reveal too much information about themselves through their social media profiles or other on-line presence. Indeed, I blogged about that very topic over two years ago. As an individual, you...

FICO World Preview: Fraud and Customer Engagement

Banks are struggling to rebuild customer trust, and the odds seem stacked against them. Just today, another set of research, this time conducted in the UK by Ipsos MORI, showed bank customers to be a very dissatisfied lot. Fewer than half of the people surveyed said they are happy with...

Who Wants to Blow the Whistle on Insider Fraud?

According to the latest staff fraud report from the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service, and specifically the Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System (CIFAS), only 3% of insider or staff fraud attacks were uncovered in 2012 using the formal “whistle blowing” process, where a colleague reports what they see or suspect. So,...

At 40, the Mobile Phone Has Matured as a Tool — and a Weapon

If “life begins at 40,” the mobile phone just entered a glorious new phase. Last week, on April 3, the mobile phone celebrated its 40th birthday. A gentlemen called Martin Cooper — a senior Motorola engineer now known as the founder of the “real cellular telephone” — made a mobile...

Authentication is the New Currency

“How would you like to pay? Faster payment? Card? Paypal?” “Sterling? Euros? Dollars?” Whatever the payment means and whatever the denomination, there is increasingly one common acceptance requirement — one common currency, if you will — for payments: authentication. Acceptance depends on authentication of the channel, the device used where...