The news: Identify fraud is terrorizing the financial sector, costing roughly a quarter of banks nearly a half a million dollars in losses in the last year, according to a study from Regula and Sapio Research. The crime appears to be hitting smaller banks harder, per Forbes.
Are you who you say you are?
- 26% of banks reported over 100 identity fraud incidents in the past year, according to Regula's report, which surveyed 1,069 fraud experts across financial services in Australia, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, and the US. Notably, only 17% of fintechs reported the same.
- 31% of banks said the incidents cost them on average $479,000 or more. The costs stemmed from business disruptions (44%), penalties and fines (36%), and legal expenses (36%). Every dollar a bank loses in a fraud incident costs that bank four times that amount, according to LexisNexis.
- Document forgery was the most common type of identity fraud banks reported, with 54% of those surveyed saying they'd dealt with incidents involving modified documents in the past year.
Read the original article on Business Insider