CU*Answers Says Fraud Tools Thwarts $148,000 in Bad Transactions

There's no point in locking the barn door after the cows run away. Ditto for detecting fraud after criminals already have looted an account.

Enter FraudNet, a service now offered by Grand Rapids, Mich., CUSO CU*Answers that is intended to nip fraud in the bud before either institutions or their members lose money.

FraudNet – which CU*Answers purchased from Fiserv – is a predictive analytics toolset that scans pending transactions against a database of known high-risk activities, IP addresses and like indicators.

“We went live with FraudNet March 4 and we have stopped $148,000 in actual fraudulent transactions as of today (Aug. 6),” said Jim Vilker, a CU*Answers vice president who heads up this activity.

“In fact, two days after we went live we stopped a $20,000 bust-out scheme.”

“I was not expecting to see so much fraud, so fast,” said Vilker.

The appeal of FraudNet, Vilker explained, is that it essentially rides on top of the bill pay rails and it continually monitors for pending transactions it believes are questionable. When it finds one, it alerts CU*Answers, which passes the alert onto the involved credit union, for review with the member whose account is in play.

“We have logged north of 30 incidents. We already are positive ROI,” said Vilker, who declined to reveal what CU*Answers paid for FraudNet.

Vilker also said around 137 credit unions are using the CU*Answers FraudNet tools.