In
fact, a recent PWC(1) survey illustrated that public awareness
of fraud is high everywhere in Europe, with over 75% of
people believing the risk of fraud in the future to be at
least as high as it is today, and 33% believe it will be
even higher.
Whilst
the UK suffers the highest rate of card fraud in Europe(2),
estimated by its Government to be £22 billion(3), fraud
is a growing issue across the rest of Europe. In the UK,
application fraud is growing at a rate of 19%(4) year-on-year
and we expect this rate of increase to be even higher across
Europe where 43% of large organisations in Europe have been
the victim of economic crime. With such high levels of fraudulent
activity taking place, it is imperative that organisations
throughout the world take steps to analyse their own activities,
systems and processes and understand how vigilant they need
to be to stop fraudulent attacks on their business.
Fraud
is a truly global problem. In the world of multiple transaction
channels, the fraudster can attack your organisation at
many levels. In particular, the ease of transacting online
makes fraud easier to commit and the increasing number of
global services on the Internet such as retailers, social
networks and gaming sites mean that you are under the threat
of attack from outside of your country borders.
Experian
has a strong heritage in providing our clients with robust
and comprehensive anti-fraud solutions. When we started
developing these solutions, fraud was not often recognised
as being a problem and was, and to a certain extent still
is, hidden within bad debt. Nowadays, fraud is acknowledged
as a major issue and costs financial services, insurance,
retail, telecoms and utilities organisations and the public
sector billions each year.
The
key to preventing fraud lies in identifying and stopping
fraud at the point of application and the identification
of fraudulent activity during transactions. Our knowledge
of fraud types and methodologies, combined with our understanding
of both mature and developing markets, has delivered significant
savings to our clients.
I’d
like to leave you with one question… are you confident
that your organisation has the ability to identify and stop
a fraudulent attack on your business?
Gary Wood
Managing Director Fraud and Identity Solutions
Decision Analytics
Experian
(1) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers'
European Economic Crime Survey
(2) Finextra, 21/11/06
(3) Centre for Retail Research
(4) CIFAS www.cifas.org.uk
“Source: Experian
Decision Analytics worldwide e-news”
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