Fake documents and synthetic identities led to higher fraud in financial services in 2022

Sapio Research and partner Regula have revealed that the impact of identity fraud varies for organizations in the Financial Services industry, based on whether they belong to the Banking or FinTech sector from a global survey recently conducted. The most prevalent form of fraudulent activity experienced by organizations in all surveyed sectors was the use of fake or modified physical documents.

Nearly half of FinTech companies, 46 percent reported being affected while for banks, forgeries and modified documents use was more frequent at 54 percent reported in the past year. And according to the findings, every fourth bank reported experiencing over 100 identity fraud incidents in the past year at 26 percent of organizations, while for the FinTech sector it was lower at 17 percent.

In another report by consumer credit firm TransUnion, digital fraud in Canada spiked 189 percent from pre-pandemic levels. According to proprietary insights from TransUnion’s global intelligence network and a specially commissioned consumer survey, the pivot to increasingly digital transactions since the beginning of the pandemic means the overall risk to individuals and organizations is even greater than it was pre-pandemic.

TransUnion research uncovered that synthetic identity fraud, which accounts for 5.3 percent of global digital fraud in 2022, jumped in volume by 132 percent. The study also examined the volume and severity of data breaches over the course of 2022 and compared them to previous years, using publicly available data analyzed by Sontiq, a TransUnion company.

Results showed that the number of data breaches in the U.S. increased by 83 percent from 2020 to 2022. These breaches played a key role in helping to fuel an explosion in identity engineering, with synthetic identities becoming a record-setting problem in 2022. Outstanding balances attributed to synthetic identities for auto, credit card, retail credit card and personal loans in the U.S. were at their highest point ever recorded by TransUnion.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  Regula  |  synthetic identity fraud  |  TransUnion