Together with NatWest, we developed and launched a new approach to prevent business payment fraud using cutting-edge machine learning and analytics.

Corporate Fraud Insights went live with NatWest in October 2017. As of September 2019, it had prevented losses of over £14.5 million with an in-flight detection rate of 90 percent.

Context

Research carried out among businesses large and small found that a quarter have been on the receiving end of attempts to redirect cash transfers. While incidences of invoice redirection, CEO & business email compromise (BEC) fraud are relatively scarce, the values are typically large.

The business impact of losing funds can be crippling. Of those to have fallen prey to fraudsters, 26 percent stated that they suffered losses of thousands of pounds, while nine percent lost millions of pounds. One quarter of business owners said the resulting stress, frustration and devastation had negatively affected their health and wellbeing.

Challenge

Detecting invoice redirection fraud is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. The relative scarcity of this type of fraud compared to legitimate payments in a corporate makes it especially challenging to spot illicit activity.

Solution

Every time a business pays an invoice, a behavioural signature is left behind. By analysing these signatures, and the signatures of historical frauds, our Corporate Fraud Insights solution is able to identify and flag suspected incidents of fraud.

A fraud feedback loop continues to evolve the machine learning models.

Result

Corporate Fraud Insights went live with NatWest in October 2017. As of September 2019, it had prevented losses of over £14.5 million to customers including charities and schools with an in-flight detection rate of 90 percent.

Notable examples include a CEO & BEC fraud amounting to almost £40,000 and an invoice redirection fraud of over £200,000.