White Paper: Could Synthetic Identity Fraud Be Hiding in Your Credit Losses?

Author: Andrew Sigfrid, Advisor, Fraud Analytics Consulting

Too often, fraud at Canadian financial organizations goes undetected because it’s been misclassified as bad debt and stays hidden deep in collections buckets. Fraudsters are talented at creating synthetic identities. They’re working the long con; behaving legitimately for weeks, months or longer to obtain higher credit limits — up until the point they default on a loan. Because the fraud goes undetected, the organization categorizes it as a credit loss instead of fraud.

“Based on my industry experience, organizations are losing significant sums of money to synthetic identity fraud — and they may not even realize it. To complicate matters, they’re dealing with the internal dilemma of clarity over who should own the fraud issue: the fraud group or the credit risk group. Without clear visibility into the issue and oversight, the fraud perpetuates,” says Patrick Boudreau, Head of Identity Management and Fraud at TransUnion.

Download the full white paper for further insights.