The Paypers launches the Financial Crime and Fraud Report 2021

Building upon previous editions, this new report aims to draw an overview on how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the cyber-criminal world, in which new scams were invented and old ones were re-purposed, and the significant role identity verification technologies play in decreasing fraud rates around the world.

Digital transformation in the financial world has brought new opportunities for all stakeholders (banks, financial institutions, fintechs, PSPs, merchants, consumers, regulators, etc.) and has accelerated the adoption of digital solutions to authenticate, identify, authorise, and onboard users. Automated customer onboarding and digital customer identification are expected to rapidly grow in the coming years, as COVID-19 has convinced even the traditional banking customers that digital contact is working. However, as we transit to the digital world, online fraudulent acts become more and more difficult to detect, so the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) technology should evolve at the same pace.

Besides fraud detection and risk management, the report depicts insights into the new regulatory landscape and ways to boost compliance strategies. 2020 has brought some regulatory changes such as the EU’s AMLD6 and the US’ Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) that provide much-needed alignment across countries and regions, closing the loopholes for money laundering networks to process funds via digital transaction channels.

The editorials in this report provide important insights on the best practices, strategies, and tools that are used to combat the threats and burdens of fraud and financial crimes. Notions like synthetic identity, robotic process automation, dynamic segmentation, corporate digital identity, payments beneficiary screening, or security tokens are just a few of the aspects explained by our collaborators.

To give you a better picture of the current hot topics, we asked thought leaders and experts to offer their opinions regarding the following aspects:

- What are the technological solutions and best practices used to deal with fraud detection and prevention – contributions from Euro Banking Association, NICE Actimize, Nordea, Veriff inform readers about the challenges brought by the ‘new digital reality’ we live in and the procedures used to combat them;

- Why is there a growing need for a digital identity layer/standard to boost KYC practices and how has COVID-19 impacted the digital onboarding process – analysing the current situation of the digital onboarding process (for end consumers and corporations), highlighting the best practices and the biggest challenges of the moment, with advice on what technologies to adopt to help banks/FIs improve their digital onboarding and KYC processes – Accenture, CleverAdvice, Citi Innovation Lab, Consult Hyperion, DueDil, HID Global, Juniper Research, KuppingerCole, One World Identity, Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), Signicat;

- How important is teams’ collaboration (fraud prevention, cybersecurity, compliance) and blending people, technology, data, reporting to develop successful AML compliance programs – institutions are now considering, experimenting with, and implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions, so it’s important to highlight the positives of using next-gen technologies by financial institutions and other regulated firms to meet their anti-money laundering (AML) commitments – Aite Group, Bank of Lithuania, Bottomline, Deloitte Reg Tech Lab, EY Americas Financial Crime Encompass, Fintrail, iSTOX, Jumio, Kapronasia.

The report features an industry mapping of the key players in fraud management, digital onboarding, KYC/AML, and transaction monitoring, also revealing their backgrounds, core services, unique selling points, and business partners via in-depth profiles. This overview of the fraud solution providers aims to help merchants, fintechs, and payment service providers grasp the current market opportunities.

The Financial Crime and Fraud Report 2021 is endorsed by Consult Hyperion, KuppingerCole, and One World Identity.