All posts by Gemma Seeckts, Global Fraud Solutions Analyst

Fraud prevention is a critical concern for businesses today. To help combat this ever-present threat, the consortium approach has emerged as a powerful tool in the fight against fraud. By pooling resources, expertise, and creating visibility, consortium members can be more effective in detecting and preventing fraudulent activities. con-sor-tium noun: A group of people, countries, companies, etc., who are working together on a particular project. What is a consortium? Within business, consortiums are a global concept and can operate under multiple categories, including finance, marketing, and tech. A well-known, successful example is Star Alliance. They are a group of airlines, whose agreement enables their members to share and benefit from flights, airport lounges, and frequent flyer programs. All Star Alliance members are working towards the same goal, which is to offer their customers a seamless travel experience. Key benefits of the consortium approach Resource sharing: Pooling resources like funding, expertise, and infrastructure can lead to cost savings and efficient resource utilisation. Risk mitigation: Shared risks make it easier for organisations to tackle ambitious projects or ventures with reduced individual exposure. Access to expertise: Members can tap into the collective knowledge and skills of the consortium, enhancing their capabilities. Market influence: Consortiums often have more influence in negotiations, regulations, and standards-setting, benefiting all members. Innovation: Collaboration can foster innovation through cross-pollination of ideas and technologies among members. Economies of scale: Consortiums can negotiate better deals on purchases or services due to their combined purchasing power. Reduced competition: In some cases, members can reduce direct competition among themselves by coordinating efforts. Market entry: Consortiums can facilitate market entry, especially in foreign markets, by leveraging each other's networks and knowledge. Shared infrastructure: Access to shared facilities or infrastructure can save costs and accelerate projects. Brand recognition: Being part of a reputable consortium can enhance an organisation's credibility and market presence. However, consortiums also come with challenges such as coordination issues, conflicts of interest, and shared decision-making. Successful consortiums require effective governance structures and clear agreements among members. Consortiums in fraud detection and prevention The success of a consortium relies on the collective commitment of its members to a shared goal. In the context of fraud prevention, this means maintaining consistent and high-quality insights across all members. To achieve this, consortium members adhere to an agreement that covers elements such as data quality and data frequency. These agreements ensure that all participants contribute their best insights and information. By fostering a culture of cooperation and sharing, consortiums create an environment where valuable insights can be harnessed to combat fraud effectively. However, it's crucial to emphasise that the success of consortiums ultimately depends on the active participation and contribution of all its members. Consortiums can only thrive when every member is dedicated to making their quality insights accessible to the group. Read more about how consortiums can revolutionise fraud detection and prevention by sharing data on fraudsters across different product types and industry sectors with Hunter.

Historically, identity graphs were used to drive marketing for businesses, allowing marketers to understand and target their audience with relevant content. But in recent years, identity graphs have emerged as a useful tactic to help businesses detect and prevent fraud due to the magnitude of data they collate and analyse. As fraud continues to evolve, businesses need to get creative and resourceful when it comes to fighting online fraud to keep pace with the fraudsters. Identity graphs allow businesses to map multiple data points to create individual customer profiles while highlighting connections across all customer profiles in their current portfolio. Download our latest Global Identity and Fraud Report How do identity graphs work? Identity graphs are databases that create a consolidated unique customer profile. Information is collected from different platforms, both online and offline, and merged into a single view. This process of gathering and merging information is known as identity resolution. The primary goal of identity resolution is to create a real-time, holistic view of an individual. How identity graphs can be used across different types of fraud Account Takeover: Identity graphs make it simple to tell when the same individual is logging into multiple accounts or when all data associated with a particular user account suddenly changes. Identity graphs can screen customer accounts that are suspected of having been compromised by takeover attacks. Credit Card Fraud: Identity graphs collate data from both online and offline means. Having access to this data can be hugely beneficial in preventing counterfeit credit card transactions. Identity graphs will map common links between cardholders and data such as point of sale locations or historic transactional behaviour. Understanding these behaviours means identity graphs can uncover suspicious transactions, helping to expose compromised credit cards and prevent fraud. Referral Fraud: Many businesses offer reward incentives to their customers to help drive engagement. While good intended, businesses that offer referral rewards may expose vulnerabilities to referral fraud. In referral fraud attacks, fraudsters will take advantage of the offered rewards without ever meeting the conditional requirements. Identity graphs make it possible to uncover referral fraud, for example, highlighting multiple referrals from one household. Gaming Fraud: Fraudsters will make multiple online gambling accounts to take advantage of any sign-up offers the vendor may offer. Likewise, fraudsters will often use multiple accounts to bet against themselves, ensuring they always win. Identity graphs can help track and highlight these instances flagging relationships between the multiple accounts. Synthetic ID Theft: Recently fraudsters have been turning to synthetic IDs to commit fraud, as opposed to sourcing legitimate IDs as per traditional identity theft. Fraudsters will combine personal data from multiple victims to create a new, non-existent identity that they can then use during online transactions. These new personas, and the inconsistencies they contain, can be easier spotted when identity graphs are applied. Anti-Money Laundering (AML): When fraudsters illegally obtain funds, they will recruit individuals to pass these funds from one source to another, making their origin hard to trace. Identity graphs can help organisations track financial transactions, providing a clear image of the journey the funds have taken, all the way from origin to destination. Innovative ways identity graphs are helping to detect and prevent fraud Cross-device Identification: Identifying customers through PII and digital data, through both deterministic and probabilistic matching, allows organisations to better identify the same user across multiple devices. This allows them to be treated as a single entity, highlighting suspicious anomalies in behaviours. Real-time: Our digital world is notoriously fast paced, and not known for standing still. Identity graphs operate by collating data and updating the associated customer profiles in real-time. Ensuring we always make decisions on accurate and up-to-date customer information is crucial for both regulatory and risk reasons. Fraud Rings: Identity graphs collect and link a vast magnitude of data. Examining each data point in tabular form can be a laborious task for investigators and spotting suspicious connections can prove difficult. When connections are presented within a graph, they can easily present powerful insights that can uncover fraud rings that could otherwise be missed. Stay in the know with our latest research and insights: