Successfully supporting a fraud unit’s transition

The challenge

Our client’s Fraud Investigations and Operations department was facing challenges as fraud techniques have become increasingly complex and the number of fraud cases has risen in recent years. Our client, as well as other financial institutions, aims to protect itself and its clients by out-smarting and out-pacing financial criminals, both from a preventive and a reactive point-of-view, while being compliant with new regulations.

To reach this goal, the department was in need of a large upstaffing and a well-designed structural transformation, explained Hajar El Moussaoui, Maxime Feuillat, Pieter Van Impe and Rémi Wattenbergh, Project Consultants at TriFinance Financial Institutions and part of the fraud team.

Why TriFinance?

The increased workload from recurring fraud incidents and the objective to fight cybercrime in the long run require the support from a partner who is able to assist on two fronts: both short term and longer term support.

And this is what we did: on the one hand, we ramped up the staffing capacity in our client’s fraud team through the assistance of ten highly motivated and immediately employable TriFinance professionals. We call this insourcing by TriFinance of a business activity.

On the other hand, we were able to bring in business expertise and advice to accompany the department’s transformation in the longer run.

Our client certainly valued this combination of services: “TriFinance was able to deliver the necessary support in the fastest way possible maintaining adequate standards and work ethic.”

The results

Thanks to our team of, TriFinance provided our client with some breathing space with regard to daily incoming fraud cases and allowed them to catch up on the backlog of untreated cases.

Additionally, with the appointment of a new lead of the Fraud Investigations and Operations department, a structured transformation of the team was carried out during the first months of our mission: clear subteams, assigned captains, job rotations,… all considerably contributed to the achievement of the daily targets and the general reduction in backlog. This result is vital given that, in theory, every case has to be handled within 24 hours for compliance purposes.

Afterwards, in order to increase the department’s ability to react swiftly, the client services expanded into late shifts during work days as well as Saturday shifts. As a consequence, our client was faced with a challenging up-staffing, in combination with a tough job market environment due to Covid-19, which made it challenging to recruit both internal and external candidates.

Thanks to the additional recruitment efforts by our client as well as the flexibility from TriFinance consultants, a rapid stabilization of the impact from COVID-19 on the daily targets and activities was achieved. TriFinance was able to offer a swift transition into a full-fledged internal team thanks to knowledge sharing and training activities from the TriFinance consultants, leaving the team ready and prepared for the job in the most efficient way possible.

Some of our realizations in a nutshell

• A substantial decrease in handling time for incoming fraud cases
• Resolution of the backlog
• Achievement of daily operational targets (TITO% treatment of upwards of 95%, Abandon rate of calls dropped from 40% to 5%, average waiting time for calls dropped from 20 minutes to 3 minutes)
• Transformation of the team (clear subteams, captains assigned - Senior members moved from operational to managerial tasks -, job rotation/multidisciplinary colleagues, late shifts, …)
• Training of about 15 new staff members
• Achievement of quick wins (stand-up meetings, dashboard usage, …) as well as more structural improvements with the help of think tanks (reimbursement policies, ways of working, …)
• Development of new anti-fraud rules in collaboration with other teams. As the management had more support with the handling of the daily tasks, they were better able to pinpoint the critical flaws in the system and think of ways to correct them.

Learning Points

As a team of young professionals, we were able to learn a wide range of hard and soft skills in this challenging and fast-moving environment. We learned to be proactive, raise questions and, especially, listen to the expertise and insights of our client.

The mission predominantly allowed us to develop our analytical skills such as stakeholder analysis, fast and precise decision making and detecting fraud patterns in a timely manner. Additionally, our proactivity was put to the test as the assignment required us to demonstrate initiative, introduce new ideas and solutions for current fraud problems and modi operandi, and suggest the implementation of procedures in order to avoid potential risks.

Furthermore, we learned a lot about customer centricity and how to give our client a feeling of trust and understanding by aiming for the best solutions and results. On the other hand, we also gained experience in keeping a situation under control with distressed or unreliable customers.

Finally, our team enjoyed a first hands-on experience with more technical aspects including financial regulations (PSD2, GDPR), interbank communication tools, internal controls and general risk management procedures.