Clari5

Customer Liability in The Age of Digital Banking

Who is liable for money lost when fraud occurs in a customer’s bank account or card through illegal access/use of ATM or any of the Digital Channels (Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, Payments, E-wallets, etc.)?

The answer depends on the country where the account is being operated.

While the customer is responsible for the safe keeping of his/her ATM Card, Pin, Internet Banking and Mobile Banking credentials, different countries have different regulations on ‘limited liability’ of the customer.

When a customer discovers and reports fraud in her account through the use of ATM, Internet Banking or Mobile Banking, she is not liable for the full funds lost.

In the US, the Federal “Regulation E” Consumer Protection Act ensures that customer’s liability is capped at $50 if she contacts the financial institution within 2 days of discovering loss, theft or theft of the access device. The bank is liable for the rest of the money lost.

Many banks take account protection a step further with their banking guarantee and even waive the $50 liability given the fiercely competitive market.

As a result, banks take the entire responsibility for the loss. The UK too has similar consumer protection clauses for electronic banking transactions.

India’s central banking institution, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been working on beefing up customer protection aspects of banking supervision for the past few years.

RBI’s recent communication to Indian banks on limited customer liability is laudable for its bold steps towards better customer service and protection in the Indian banking ecosystem.

It mandates banks to adopt better systems and processes to ensure safety and security of electronic transactions including the robust fraud detection and prevention mechanisms.

Some of the highlights in the communication:

Mandatory By Banks For All Digital Transactions

  • Registration of customers for text alerts and email wherever available, for electronic transactions.
  • Text alerts to customers for all electronic transactions and email alerts to customer registered email.
  • Ability for customer to report unauthorised transactions 24X7 through multiple channels (including website, phone banking, SMS, email, IVR, toll-free helpline, home branch).
  • Enable customers to instantly respond by Reply to text alert for unauthorised transactions.

Zero Liability of Customer

The customer has zero liability for the loss where unauthorised transaction occurs in case of:

  • Contributory fraud/negligence/deficiency on part of bank irrespective of whether the transaction is reported by the customer.
  • Third party breach, where the deficiency lies neither with the bank nor with the customer but lies elsewhere in the system and the customer notifies the bank within 3 working days of receiving the communication from the bank regarding the transaction.

Limited Liability of Customer

The customer has limited liability for the lost funds due to unauthorised transactions in the following cases:

  • Where loss is due to negligence of the customer, such as sharing payment credentials, the customer will bear the entire loss until customer reports the unauthroised transaction to the bank. Any loss occuring after customer reports unauthorised transaction should be borne by the bank.
  • Where the responsibility for the unauthorised electronic banking transaction lies neither with the bank nor with the customer, but lies elsewhere in the system and when there is a delay (of 4 to 7 working days after receiving the communication from the bank) on the part of the customer in notifying the bank of such a transaction, the per transaction liability of the customer shall be limited to the range of INR 5000 to INR 25,000 based on the type of the accounts and the average balance/credit limit.
  • Where the delay in reporting is beyond 7 working days, the customer liability shall be determined as per the bank’s Board approved policy.

Customer Liability – Summary

Time Taken To Report Fraudulent Transaction From Date Of Receiving The Communication Customer’s Liability (in INR)

Within 3 working days

Zero liability

Within 4 to 7 working days

The transaction value or the amount mentioned in Table 1, whichever is lower

Beyond 7 working days

As per the bank’s Board approved policy

Moreover, the bank should credit the amount involved in unauthorised transactions to the customer’s account within 10 working days from the date of reporting by the customer.

These measures will certainly take digital adoption to the next level for the Indian banking sector and the overall economy.

While banks must invest in the enabling technology and processes, the benefits of increased customer confidence in digital adoption far outweigh the enablement costs.

A ‘Yin and Yang’ Approach to Growing Topline and Bottom-line

How To Monetize your Anti-Fraud Solution to Make Money for you

Yin and Yang blogsIn Chinese philosophy,   yin and yang (also yin-yang or yin yang, ‘dark-bright’) explains how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world.

This intriguing idea actually applies perfectly in the context of banking, if we were to see the yin as saving money (from losses) and the yang as making money (from sales).

The fundamental principle is that the very same investment in data analytics and real-time decisioning for detecting/preventing fraud can be monetized for earning more revenues.

Imagine an intelligent system that understands customers’ behavioral patterns to detect and prevent fraud is also creating precise personas for marketing teams to target.

This is because the same extreme real-time, context-aware logic/approach used to combat cross-channel fraud can also help enable intelligent, hyper-precise targeted and contextual customer engagements.

At the heart of the hypothesis lies the fact that banks have the ‘soul’ of the customer.

Customer flowBanking is the only industry where the entire life of the customer flows through it. A bank knows how much its customers earn, where they live, where they travel to, how much they spend, who’s part of the family, whether they own their home, even how much fuel they put in the car.

No other industry (not even telco or retail) has this very special privilege of having a 360 degree view of a customer’s life. Only banks have the advantage and ability to actually convert this ‘resident intel’ to their benefit.

A real-time, enterprise-wide, cross-channel fraud management solution requires that every banking transaction is available in memory in real-time.

But since only a relatively small percentage of transactions are fraudulent and since the data is available in the system memory, the bank can run positive scenarios in real-time after having assigned fraud risk to certain transactions during the negative-scenario test-run.

Absolute real-timeThe solution can use the same data captured per transaction and analyze the spending and behavior patterns to throw up potential cross-sell and up-sell scenarios in absolute real-time.

Precise data analytics on behavior patterns helps create intelligent and efficiently targeted customer interactions and campaigns to grow the topline.

So while the solution helps the bank’s larger enterprise fraud management initiatives with …

  • A unified case management system for fraud/AML investigation with 360-degree view of behavior across products and channels in one single place.
  • Extreme real-time, context-aware, cross-channel fraud detection and prevention.
  • Monitoring financial and non-financial transactions of customers, accounts, users and employees across branch and channel transactions in real-time to detect suspicious fraud and respond with the right decision in real-time and generate alerts for investigation.
  • Monitoring Salary Accounts’ to identify increase in Salary Credits or non-usage of Salary Accounts.

… it can also be used for –

  • Tracking customers’ POS/E-com channels transactions for generating extreme real-time, as-of-the-moment cross-sell and up-sell alerts.
  • Identifying customers who usually travel internationally and offering them custom products in real-time.
  • Creating customer delight in branch and digital transactions.

So altogether the bank benefits from a –

  • Smart, intelligent, extreme real-time solution that manages fraud detection/prevention as well as enables customer revenue maximization.
  • Non-invasive, bolt-on solution that integrates seamlessly with source systems and reduces TCO.
  • Lowered cost of compliance of fraud and AML regulatory requirements.
  • Single, unified platform that helps protects the bottom-line and grows topline.

Unified Fraud ManagementWhile there may not be many solutions that have the ability to see topline and bottom-line as 2 sides of the same coin, CustomerXPs’ Clari5 seems to one. Its unified fraud management platform leverages the same context-aware, real-time decisioning to enable real-time customer cross/upsell.

Clari5 handles exceptionally large data volumes across multiple channels and source systems in real-time, and processes transactional as well as non-transactional events in real-time and applies over 150 rules to generate alerts in real-time that can be leveraged for both fraud management as well as revenue enhancement.

Banks get to use the same real-time insights that helps combat fraud to also generate profits because the approach that uses the same fundamental logic to protect/save money (curb fraud losses) is also being used to make money (upsell / cross sell).

If banks can view their topline and bottom-line as the yin and yang of their operations, then a single solution that helps achieve both can very well be the proverbial one stone designed to kill two birds.

Increasing Importance of Big Data in Banking

Increasing Importance of Big Data in Banking:

The phrase big data has become a buzz word. Everyone talks about it or has information in bits and pieces, but only few companies know how to utilize the same. Big data is characterized by the tremendous volumes, varieties and velocities of data, that are generated by a wide array of sources, customers, partners and regulators (IBM)

Banking is among many industries which has a vast and useful data about their customers.  But right now, only a handful of banks are utilizing this pool of information and taking steps to enhance Customer Experience and deducing the data to combat fraud. Banks are aware of the fact that if the data is used smartly they will be able to cater to the needs of customers accurately.

As per research from (Capgemini) only 37% of customers believe that banks understand their needs and preferences. Banks have an abundance of informative data, but the major challenges they are facing today is how to utilize it intelligently, shortage of skilled people, insufficient tools, time constraints, the high cost associated, unstructured vast data and much more.

Most of the banks have silo based solutions to harness this pool of information. (Capgemini) research shows that organizational silos are the single biggest barrier to success with big data. Banks should apply 360 degree approach and understand the customers’ needs and act accordingly.

Big data can do wonders for banks if mined properly. Big data help to limit customer attrition, help in relationship management, increase in ROI and reducing fraud. Big data can be utilized to:

 

  • Increase revenues by optimizing offers according to the customers’ needs
  • Cross sell & up sell to the customers based on the information deduced from big data
  • Reverse attrition & meets stringent regulatory requirements
  • Establish more meaningful customer relationships
  • Generate more personalized multichannel customer journeys
  • Detect and prevent fraud by using data analytics
  • Understand the behavior of their customers
  • Mine new revenue streams
  • Manage risk and take precautionary actions
  • Understand crime and help to predict where crime is likely to occur

Big data is being increasingly used and studied by banks now. Banks have understood the potential of big data and are taking measures to apply it.  Banks should come out of their silo based legacy solution to more wider and useful approach that will not only enhance customer experience, but also will help them to increase ROI, prevent fraud and reduce attrition rate.