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Fraud at call centers operated by financial services organizations increased 39% from 2019 to 2022, according to new data from TransUnion LLC.
That was the third-largest increase among sectors, surpassed only by travel and leisure and logistics, finds the TransUnion “2023 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report.” The report is based on more than 500 million transactions in 2022 by U.S. financial institutions.
Released Monday, the report also detailed that 50% of financial-services call centers experienced fraud-attack increases that were between 11% and 50% higher in 2022 versus 2021 rates.
Call centers can be vectors for account-takeover fraud. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that most such fraud starts in a call center, TransUnion says. “Because identity fraud in financial services, such as account takeover or synthetic identities, results in direct financial crime, the financial industry has an even more pronounced incentive to guard against fraud in call centers, but in a way that is as efficient as possible for financial-services organizations and their customers,” the report says.
To curtail fraud, nearly 66% of financial-industry respondents would like authentication of a caller to begin before agent interaction happens.
The report also looked at top fraud types. Credit cards accounted for 6.5% of digital fraud in 2022, a 76% increase from 2019. That was followed by account takeover at 6.3%, an 81% increase. True identity theft, ACH/debit, and synthetic identity completed the top five. True identity theft, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, is when someone uses a person’s actual identifying information.
Within the United States, 51% of adults—TransUnion surveyed 13,383 individuals globally—cited identity theft as their top fraud concern, followed by stolen credit card, 48%, and phishing, 38%.
