Thinking of buying document fraud detection software? Read this first

Though these teams work tirelessly to investigate potential fraud, criminals now use software and document manipulation techniques that are invisible to the human eye. They have not been effectively equipped to navigate this continuously changing fraud landscape. 

Hundreds of hours are spent on manual document reviews every single week, with fraud, risk, and operations teams bearing the brunt of this extremely tedious exercise. Backlogs begin to pile up. Agents spend more and more time on edge cases searching for evidence of tampering or manipulation. And creditworthy customers spend days or months waiting for a response. Many of them leave for another bank or lender. Others will be rejected because of a subjective decision. 

In an increasingly digital, geographically diverse, and faster world, companies need to optimize their fraud and credit risk operations to stay competitive and provide exceptional customer experiences. 

Fast-growing fintechs are addressing this challenge by transforming their application review process with document fraud detection and automation. 

‍Reviewing documents for fraud: old way vs. new way

Companies are able to do this by using AI models continuously trained and tested on millions of data points, enabling them to identify new document manipulation techniques and quickly move away from subjectivity by justifying every ‘yes’ and ‘no’ decision with data. 

Especially during uncertain economic times, fraud, risk, and operations teams who embrace this technology are able to protect their company’s reputation and revenue, ultimately acting as defenders against fraud losses and unnecessary operational costs.  

Document fraud detection and automation streamlines the most tedious parts of account opening and underwriting workflows. Leading solutions embrace a no-humans-in-the-loop approach to return results in seconds, provide fraud insights that could not be detected with the human eye, and keep sensitive data safe. 

But what exactly is document fraud detection and automation? Is this solution right for your team? And if so, should you build it or buy it? Keep reading to learn all of that and more in this guide. 

Document fraud detection and automation: build vs. buy

A huge diversification of anti-fraud vendors has come to market in the past decade. Many of these newer technologies are very easy to integrate (typically via API), and while they may seem expensive on the surface, they only need to catch a couple of fraud cases to end up paying for themselves. 

The best fraud defense involves layering technology, and companies now have the ability to use best-in-class solutions for each point of customer interaction where fraud can occur. 

When should you build document fraud detection and automation? 

The companies best suited to build software like this are ones who can dedicate many years and resources. But builder beware: While it may be possible to build document automation tools in-house, it will be challenging to build the best fraud detection from a home-grown solution. 

Parsing and OCR tools can be used in tandem with off-the-shelf machine learning (ML) models to build document automation, but even this can be tricky unless you have a tech-first team that includes many data scientists.  

What’s more? In addition to the initial setup for an in-house solution, you’ll need to invest in continual maintenance to be up-to-date and accurate, as well. 

Document fraud detection is more difficult for companies to build in-house. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models benefit from as much data as possible, but each individual company is limited to only their own dataset. 

That’s why companies partner with document fraud detection solutions instead: Criminals commit fraud in different ways, and those solutions are pulling data from across their customer base to identify coordinated attacks and emerging trends faster. 

When should you buy document fraud detection and automation?

You should look for a document fraud detection and automation solution when you’ve decided that building in-house is not viable or cost-effective for your team. Once you make that decision, you’ll want to partner with an innovative team that specializes in these disciplines and can easily integrate them into your current workflow. 

Fraud Detection & Automation solutions are extremely effective for a variety of reasons, but purchasing the wrong product for you and your team could become a costly mistake. Take your time and evaluate the capabilities and cost of all your options to make sure you’re choosing the correct platform for your team.

Interested in speaking to an expert about your document fraud detection and automation needs? Schedule a time to speak with a member of our team.

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This is an excerpt from “An intelligent buyer’s guide to document fraud detection and automation.”