TechBytes with Marika Vilen, SVP Platform Commercialization, Global Identity & Fraud at Experian

Hi Marika, please tell us about your current role and the team / technology you currently handle at Experian.

I’m the SVP of Platform Commercialization at Experian Global Identity & Fraud. My team looks after the global partner ecosystem for CrossCore, our flagship identity & fraud platform.  We also manage commercialization and go-to-market strategy for global identity and fraud solutions.

With CrossCore, businesses benefit from a broad set of capabilities and expertise from Experian as well as from our partners yet without the complexity of having to manage different vendors.  The orchestration and strategy management capabilities on CrossCore enable businesses to leverage multiple providers and fraud and identity technologies in a way that suits their business needs and minimizes the disruption on their customers’ digital journeys.

It has become an extremely difficult situation for Business Operations teams when it comes to delivering relevant digital experiences. How do you enable your clients to overcome these challenges?

The immediate needs created in the wake of the global pandemic call for businesses to offer their customers solutions that not only enable them to manage the immediate crisis but also help you support them as they assimilate into the “new normal.” We have noticed an added pressure for businesses to equip their teams with the necessary tools and knowledge to continue serving customers in a dynamic environment. Organizations must keep up with the times so they can adapt their response to the needs at hand and retain value to their customers.

Through CrossCore partner ecosystem, we empower our clients to quickly and securely shift online, so they can meet new needs and demands in the most possible effective way. We continue to invest in our teams and technology stack with a view to remain and help businesses stay ahead of the evolving fraud techniques and identity management advances.

Tell us a little more about your CrossCore Partner program and how it helps customers manage their Identity and Fraud Prevention strategies.

The CrossCore Partner Program combines rich data assets from Experian with identity insights from its curated ecosystem of best in class identity and fraud partners.

The platform allows clients to strategically select how they orchestrate such capabilities in order to maximize fraud prevention while not compromising the client experience. This flexibility and self-service enable businesses to react quickly to new fraud threats and compliance requirements without the need to integrate and deploy new identity and fraud products. By leveraging the platform, businesses can easily access and layer fraud solutions to catch more fraud and reduce friction for genuine consumers.

The platform offers a mix of Experian built best-in-class data and analytics as well as regional and global partners, providing Experian customers industry-leading ID & Fraud solutions, combined with first-class orchestration, decisioning, ML and risk management capabilities.  This allows our clients to maximize the ROI for their ID&F investments.

Please tell us about your collaboration with BioCatch and how you bring device intelligence to safeguard customer onboarding and lifecycle management?

We have a partnership with Biocatch whereby Experian’s device intelligence and machine learning are combined with behavioral biometrics capabilities from BioCatch. The resulting joint approach allows our clients to increase the amount of fraud captured without sacrificing their customer experience. Research shows that a significant number of clients abandon their digital activities due to the potential disruption some fraud prevention solutions create in digital client journeys.  This is why passive and continuous authentication is so powerful in enabling smooth yet trustworthy client experiences.

Given the industry average of $1,500 per account in account opening fraud-related losses, global financial services providers that evaluate between 15 and 20 million transactions per year could avoid an additional $10 million in losses related to previously unidentified fraud by applying supplementary layers of fraud solutions. This layered approach combining behavioral biometrics, device intelligence, and machine learning increases confidence in account opening fraud controls by providing comprehensive protection against further fraud losses.

Have you analyzed the industry trends for Identity and Fraud (ID & F)?

One of the most noticeable industry trends is the rise in account management and account takeover fraud.

To combat this rising risk of fraud, the market needs to reduce its reliance on usernames and passwords and either embrace or continue to use layered fraud prevention solutions. It’s worth noting that 57% of businesses have reported higher losses from account opening and account takeover fraud in the past year.

In those regions where there’s a traditional reliance on tactics such as one-time passcodes sent via SMS, we see more activity related to SIM swapping fraud on mobile phones, or phone number porting (where fraudsters take over the mobile communication channel to intercept those tokens).

We have observed an increase in the number of automated attacks as well. We are already hearing about significant surges in credential stuffing attacks, as fraudsters automate scripts to guess credentials, as a preface to account takeover attacks. We believe that fraudsters will employ more advanced analytics and AI over time, to refine impersonation attacks, particularly against certain biometrics security features like facial recognition, for example. This may be farther out than 2021, but something to keep an eye on.

Thank you, Marika, for answering all our questions!