Speed to insight and decisions is more important than ever, to be able to mitigate the risk of fraud and financial crimes.

During the KL media hospitality lunch, Febrianto Siboro, SAS’s newly minted managing director for the Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam ‘cluster’, shared SAS’ vision for the company in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. After that, the global lead for enterprise fraud solutions, Ian Holmes,  shared the latest trends, use cases, and challenges in banking, especially in the areas of digital payment fraud and financial crimes.

Business expansion opportunity

Febrianto’s focus is to cultivate and strengthen channel partnerships by fostering collaboration with key stakeholders and enhancing customer satisfaction.

When he was appointed to his role last November, Febrianto had shared, “With Indonesia and Vietnam amongst the top largest digital economies in Southeast Asia as well as the fastest in the region1, the potential for data analytics to drive business value and transformation is immense.

“Combining the talents and resources of these countries (Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia) as a region enables us to diversify our value proposition and service offerings, that will lead to more competitive and innovative offerings for our customers. I look forward to working closely with our partners and customers to deliver innovative solutions that address their unique challenges and opportunities.”

Fast forward 5 months later, and Febrianto referred to a recently concluded study by ACFE, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, as well as another conducted by SAS and ACFE, to highlight how nine in 10 organizations (91%) use data analytics techniques as part of their anti-fraud programs.

Also significant is the discovery that 83% of organizations expect to implement generative AI as part of their anti-fraud programs over the next two years.

This aligns with SAS’ mission to progress the growth of the data analytics market in the region.

A more chilling fact the study uncovered from the 138 countries and territories it researched, was how an estimated 5% of revenue is lost to fraud, every single year.

Fraud and risk clampdown

Ian, who has extensive experience in fraud strategy, especially with regards to payments and application fraud, wanted to highlight how coordinated efforts between government, regulatory bodies, and the private sector for anti-money laundering (AML) will now extend to fraud in a concerted effort to mitigate scam risk.

Shared ecosystem data like email addresses, names, addresses used consistently over time can help give entities confidence in verifying identities when onboarding new customers digitally.

According to Ian, mandatory codes could be proposed according to industries like banks, telcos, digital communications platforms, and they could cover capabilities like anti-scam systems needing to be responsive to new products, services, designs, and technologies, or consumers being able to verify information in real-time. Of notable significance also is cooperation between industry players to share data relating to scams, and a requirement to monitor and report when scams occur.

When asked to share about the implications of eKYC, or electronic Know-your-customer initiatives, Febrianto commented that shared ecosystem data like email addresses, names, addresses used consistently over time can help give entities confidence in verifying identities when onboarding new customers digitally.

So, besides satisfying KYC requirements that banks, insurance, and other business entities have, eKYC has potential to help with fraud detection, as well.