Accourt specialises in two distinct disciplines for addressing and managing risk in financial services at an organisation and industry level: Fraud Intelligence and Data Sharing, and Credit Risk Management and Insolvency Prediction.
Fraud Intelligence & Data Sharing
The cost of fraud to the UK economy today is conservatively estimated at around £20 billion per year with some facets of fraud experiencing aggressive growth. A number of high profile and significant security lapses with the personal and banking data of UK consumers has also grabbed the attention of the public, in addition to that of the UK Information Commissioner. Identity theft is an increasingly common threat and concern across the UK and around the world.
Over the past few years the UK financial services industry has taken various steps in an attempt to address this issue. These include a number of product and service enhancements (e.g. the introduction of Chip and PIN to address plastic card counterfeiting), combined with the introduction of various initiatives and organisations with specific remits to target fraudulent activity. These initiatives include the establishment of:
- Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Card Unit (DCPCU) - a joint initiative between UK law enforcement and UK retail banks originally established to deal with cheque and plastic card based fraud but now with a wider remit due to its success.
- Payment Industry and Police Joint Intelligence Unit (PIPJIU) - arising from the successes of the DCPCU's Fraud Intelligence Bureau (FIB), the PIPJIU will supersede the FIB and will target fraud instances relating to the UK payments industry. One of the PIPJIU's responsibilities is to operate and manage the industry's Fraud Intelligence Sharing System (FISS) in conjunction with APACS members.
- CIFAS - a not for profit membership association, solely dedicated to the prevention of financial crime, CIFAS provides a range of fraud prevention services to its members, including a fraud avoidance system used by the UK's financial services companies, public authorities and other organisations. This system allows members to exchange details of customer applications for products or services that are considered to be fraudulent because the information provided by the applicant fails verification checks. Members can also exchange information about accounts and services that are being fraudulently used or insurance and other claims which are considered to be fraudulent. CIFAS members also exchange information about innocent victims of fraud to protect them from further occurrences.
- Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) - an organisation to help combat UK insurance fraud by sharing claims and other insurance-related data across the UK insurance industry, analysing this data and then taking appropriate action.
Despite these and other measures adopted in the UK, and similar programmes around the world, criminals are becoming increasingly creative and sophisticated in their approach to financial services-related crime and fraud. As articulated in the Attorney General's 2006 UK Fraud Review, higher levels of organised financial crime have also driven the need for a central knowledge management function for the construction and dissemination of high quality fraud intelligence across the public and private sectors of the UK and within individual UK organisations.
How can Accourt help?
Accourt has recently been responsible for assisting the UK retail banking industry to define and implement an approach to fraud intelligence sharing against the rapidly evolving UK fraud intelligence landscape, including the development of business cases. We have a detailed understanding of this environment and the key stakeholders across the public and private sectors in the UK. This places us in a unique and enviable position to assist financial services organisations in rapidly articulating approaches to address their requirements in this area.
The market is also seeing fast decreasing levels of tolerance from the UK Information Commissioner for security breaches, combined with severe punitive action against the organisations and bodies responsible for them. This means that most organisations have begun to institute additional layers of control and monitoring to guard against this risk. Accourt is well placed to advise on measures to monitor fraud instances arising from data compromise and best practice for risk avoidance.
Credit Risk & Insolvency Prediction
Walking the tightrope between healthy product and customer growth and effective credit strategy and risk management is a challenge that all lending institutions face on a daily basis. There are a number of areas driving the need for positive and effective credit risk management: increases in personal insolvencies, increased exposure in a number of sectors - not just sub-prime - for some organisations and the inescapable threat of fraud.
UK insolvencies in particular have increased in recent years, causing significant concern to UK retail financial services organisations. The estimated exposure across Europe is well in excess of €3 billion with the UK holding between 60% and 65% of this exposure.
How can Accourt help?
Accourt has led a number of innovative initiatives to assist financial services organisations to develop a more proactive, integrated and effective approach to managing credit risk on a number of fronts, including insolvency and risk event prediction. These initiatives have either been focused within individual organisations or targeted on a wider industry-level front. However, in each case, the principle remains the same: to enable organisations to predict accurately and reliably the likelihood of a risk event occurring sufficiently far in advance to support the application of proactive measures. These measures should not only eliminate the likelihood of the risk exposure materialising, but also support customer retention; the organisation must be able to foster the customer relationship with the support of effective risk management prior to adverse customer action being required.
Increasing pressure on unsecured lenders to vet and decide upon credit applications in near real-time continues to encourage organisations to seek best in class risk management and technology support. Accourt's broad and deep knowledge and experience in this field is second to none. Furthermore, Accourt's product and technology independence ensures that organisations receive truly unbiased and realistic support and advice.
Our range of services in this area includes credit risk management strategy and roadmap development; business case development and facilitation of multi-stakeholder buy-in; business and operational solution design; independent vendor and technology analysis, evaluation and selection; and implementation planning and support.