AKBANK EXTENDS FRAUD PROTECTION TO DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS AND MOBILE PAYMENTS USING FICO SYSTEM

Turkish banking leader will use Falcon Fraud Manager to advance enterprise fraud protection

FICO (NYSE:FICO), a leading predictive analytics and decision management software company, announced that Akbank, one of Turkey’s leading financial institutions, will extend its use of FICO^® Falcon^® Fraud Manager to monitor demand deposit account (DDA) transactions, including online and mobile transactions. Akbank will be one of Europe’s first banks to monitor fraud on each customer’s card transactions, online banking, mobile banking and other activity using one system.

Akbank already uses FICO Falcon Fraud Manager to check credit and debit card transactions for suspicious activity, to monitor its merchant network for potential fraud, and to stop fraudulent applications for credit cards. By using one system to monitor credit and debit transactions, Akbank will further strengthen its fraud monitoring and perform customer-level fraud checks across multiple channels, including online banking, mobile banking, ATMs, call centers and branches.

With this richer stream of data, the FICO system can detect suspicious patterns faster and increase customer security. Akbank’s fraud team will use the system to deploy multiple fraud detection algorithms and manage fraud cases to speedy resolution using the advanced customer-level case management functionality in FICO Falcon. Akbank is using advanced analytics developed by FICO that examine both global and local fraud trends, and is also setting up special workflows for specific customer segments to improve performance.

“We have achieved very strong results using FICO Falcon Fraud Manager,” said Yeşim Harbath, senior vice president at Akbank. “By integrating the DDA module, we will be increasing our enterprise fraud protection for our valued customers, and minimizing customer disturbance through more efficient detection. The Falcon system provides a lower operational cost than if we ran two different systems, and we will also gain in resource efficiency by managing and maintaining just one fraud system for all channels. We reviewed several solutions, but FICO had the strongest product and the most experience helping banks like ours succeed.”

“As internet and mobile banking grow, a cross-channel view of a customer’s banking activity becomes more important for stopping fraud,” said Kerem Gul, who manages FICO’s operations in Turkey from the company’s new Istanbul offices. “We are proud to help banking leaders like Akbank make enterprise fraud management a reality.”

With a consolidated asset size of close to USD$93 billion, a strong and extensive national distribution network comprising around 990 branches, 16,500 employees, more than 4.000 ATMs and 290,000 POS terminals, Akbank is one of the most valuable companies in Turkey in terms of its market capitalisation. Akbank is also “the most valuable banking brand in Turkey” according to the Brand Finance – Banking 500, 2014 report, for the third consecutive year. The Banker, Euromoney, EMEA Finance and World Finance recognized Akbank as “the best bank of Turkey” in 2013. Akbank was also named “the best bank in the world in tech and innovation” by The Banker. In addition, the bank won “the best smart phone app of the year” award at Mobile World Congress – GSMA, held in Barcelona this year.

FICO^® Falcon^® Fraud Manager is the most accurate and comprehensive solution for detecting payment fraud, reducing losses by up to 50 percent. Protecting more than 2.5 billion payment accounts worldwide, Falcon Fraud Manager detects fraud while minimizing both operational costs as well as adverse customer impacts.

Today, FICO also announces the integration of its fraud management system with 41^st Parameter’scybersecurity technology to reduce blocks on online transactions

Enhanced device and digital consumer insights will reduce false positive rates for card-not-present fraud, to increase revenues and customer satisfaction

FICO has partnered with 41st Parameter®, a part of Experian and a leader in securing online relationships, to fight fraud on card-not-present (CNP) transactions – the top source of payment card fraud today. FICO is integrating 41st Parameter’s TrustInsight™ with the FICO® Falcon® Platform, which protects 2.5 billion card accounts and is used by more than 9,000 financial institutions worldwide.

Authenticating the device being used in a transaction provides yet another layer of detection to the Falcon Platform, which includes proprietary analytics based on more than 30 patents. The integration will let more genuine transactions proceed in real time, while reducing false positive rates for card-not-present fraud.

FICO’s research shows that total card fraud grew 13 percent in the U.S. from January 2012 to September 2013. CNP fraud accounted for nearly half of credit card and debit card fraud during this period.

41^st Parameter’s TrustInsight™ solution provides a real-time analysis of a transaction, crowd-sourced from a network of merchants, that produces a TrustScore™ indicating whether the transaction is likely to be genuine and should be approved. TrustInsight helps reduce the number of “false positives,” or good transactions that are declined or investigated by the card issuer. The TrustScore, integrated with the FICO Falcon Fraud Manager Platform, provides a link between data the merchant knows and data the issuer knows to enable issuers to utilize additional information that is not currently available in their fraud detection process, including the identification of a cardholder’s “trusted devices.”

For instance, if a cardholder is on holiday and tries to purchase a flight online, Falcon Fraud Manager’s advanced analytics might rate this as a suspicious transaction if the location and the value were unusual for the cardholder.  TrustInsight could identify that in fact the cardholder was using their own mobile phone for the transaction, which makes the transaction far likelier to be genuine.

“The future of payments is online and mobile, where the card is not present,” said TJ Horan, vice president for Fraud Solutions at FICO. “Integrating 41^st Parameter’s TrustInsight technology with the FICO Falcon Platform score will enable issuers to increase the approval rate, and corresponding revenue for CNP transactions. With TrustInsight, we believe issuers can recover more than 30 percent of transactions declined for fraud reasons that are actually false positives. The entire online commerce ecosystem will benefit, including significant improvement in customer experience, added consumer confidence, and additional revenue for merchants and issuers.”

“Most companies just don’t know their online customers, and if you can’t recognize your customers how can you authorize transactions?” said Ori Eisen, founder and chief innovation officer at 41st Parameter.  “41st Parameter advanced technology provides FICO’s worldwide Falcon customers, and their cardholders, additional protection against today’s biggest card fraud threat. FICO’s commitment to seeking out and incorporating the most innovative solutions into their products is integral to their market reputation.”

FICO has been named a leader or best-in-class solution for enterprise fraud management in recent reports by CEB TowerGroup, Forrester and Chartis.