Fraud and Prevention

WKFS Bolsters Anti-Fraud System For U.S. and U.K. Firms

By James Comtois
August 5, 2009

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has enhanced its Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud software to help U.S. and U.K. financial institutions prevent crimes tied to cash management activities. The latest release of Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud helps institutions identify the precursors to cash management fraud before losses are incurred.

Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud can help both U.S. and U.K. institutions monitor for criminal activity such as account hijacking, kiting, insider fraud, ATM fraud, counterfeited check and identity theft-based scenarios continuously and in real time. As a result, institutions are better able to prevent such fraud before it occurs and stop funds from ever leaving the organization.

"International, regional and community banks, credit unions, security firms and other financial services institutions are all fair game in these individuals' efforts to commit wire transfer, automated clearing house and other types of cash management fraud," said Todd Cooper, vice president and general manager of WKFS' Financial Intelligence Unit. "WKFS' Wiz Sentri software can help all institutions stop financial criminals before they are successful."

According to the Association of Financial Professionals' 2009 Payments and Fraud Control Survey, more than 70% of U.S. organizations surveyed experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2008. Organizations that suffered a financial loss as a result of wire fraud often did so because they didn't follow best practices and didn't execute their own business rules related to wire transactions.

In the U.K., APACS noted a 185% increase in online banking fraud in the first six months of 2008 when compared to the same timeframe in 2007.

Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud is designed to help companies better identify accounts, customers and transactions that are most susceptible to fraud surrounding cash management activities, ranking the relative risk exposure each entity presents.

Using the software, an institution can then establish profiles for these accounts based on historical patterns of transactional activity. If Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud identifies an unusual transaction, or set of transactions, based on the account's previous transactional history, the software alerts the institution. The company may then be able to place a hold on the transaction and further investigate for potential fraud before any funds are released.

The software also facilitates and helps automate investigations by providing a framework for gathering and managing important forensic information. By recording and storing relevant application data across the institution in a compressed and digitally signed format, Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud can provide a clear chain of custody of the fraudulent activity that may be used as forensic evidence in a court of law.

Wiz Sentri: Anti-Fraud software seamlessly plugs into an institution's existing network, which can result in a faster implementation at a fraction of the cost of traditional monitoring systems. The platform can help institutions monitor legacy and Web-based systems for suspicious activity using a single set of services. This unique architecture may be of particular value to large institutions with heavy investments in legacy systems. It also enables the development of anti-fraud rules to help keep up with changing fraud schemes and allows the software to be scalable across large enterprises.