Businesses believe collaboration is key to beating identity fraud, with Australia looking to govt for clear standards

24 July 2024 - SYDNEY, Australia - New research from GBG, the leading expert in global identity and location, has revealed 81% of APAC businesses believe cross-sector collaboration and intelligence sharing is key to stemming the rising tide of fraudulent criminal activity. The findings are part of GBG's new Global Fraud Report 2024 which surveyed businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Mayalsia, Indonesia, Thailand and The Philippines, in financial services, fintech, crypto, banking, retail and gaming to gauge levels and types of fraud, how this is impacting businesses and how they are responding.
 

How does collaboration work? And where is it happening?
When it comes to intelligence sharing and collaboration, businesses are already taking action. Over three quarters (80%) of APAC businesses are currently part of an identity intelligence consortium, which connect transactions taking place around the world and share international consumer intelligence between businesses, across sectors and national borders. Of those who are not part of an identity intelligence consortium, the majority (91%) believe they should join one.
 

Barriers to collaboration

More than three quarters (83%) of APAC businesses surveyed believe organisations are too worried about maintaining a competitive advantage to participate in collaboration to combat fraud. 79% believe global governments are not doing enough to support cross-sector collaboration. This is despite the fact that 76% of APAC businesses say it's extremely difficult to identify fraudsters at the point of onboarding.
 

Carol Chris, General Manager, APAC at GBG said: "Sharing consumer intelligence to combat fraud does not mean a business will lose its competitive advantage - this is a myth that needs to be busted and fast. Businesses do not share raw data within consortia, but anonymised patterns and insights on confirmed or suspicious fraud. This has a huge benefit for all businesses - regardless of sector. Afterall, criminals don't limit fraud attacks to one business, industry or stop at national boundaries either.
 

If businesses are not part of such a group, they risk losing out because they will not benefit from the early insights that can pre-empt crime detection and stop fraudsters before ever entering a business. Alarmingly more than two thirds (76%) of APAC businesses say it's extremely difficult to identify fraudsters at the point of onboarding - it's critical this is reduced."
 

Australian organisations look to government to set clear standards

Almost a quarter of (24%) Australian respondents say our local government is not doing enough to help organisations fight fraud. When asked what they think the government should be doing to help fight fraud, more than half (59%) indicated setting clear standards on fraud prevention requirements was the key issue. The next issue was supporting organisations with risk of data breaches. Given 98.9% of respondents were impacted by a data breach in the last 12 months, it is natural this is top of mind for more than half of Australian respondents (52%).
 

Increasing fraud levels

GBG's report is published against a backdrop of rising fraud, with 69% of Australian businesses surveyed admitting they have experienced known or suspected fraud in the past 12 months. Almost three quarters (71%) also revealed fraud attempts had increased compared to the previous year. Over three quarters (78%) said there had been a significant increase in sophistication of fraud attempts over the past year. With that said, 69% of respondents believe that opportunistic and convenient fraud is more of a threat to their businesses than sophisticated fraud, which is of greatest concern to 31%.
 

Burnout is common for those fighting fraud

One hundred percent of Australian professionals working in risk, fraud or are losing sleep over the risk fraud poses to their organization, with respondents most likely to say insufficient resources (46%), shifting tactics used by fraudsters (44%), organisational silos between compliance, fraud and identity teams (44%) and verification of identity (42%) keeping them up at night. Meanwhile, Australian respondents are fighting the biggest challenges in their job around lack of shared knowledge, such as identifying and stopping fraud at the point of onboarding (32%), understanding the latest fraud trends (31%), and knowing the best tools to use (31%).
 

Carol Chris concludes: "Shared consumer intelligence is a powerful trust-building tool that creates a safer environment and online experiences for both businesses and consumers. It is heartening to see businesses are embracing this as it keeps them, and their users protected from fraud and financial loss. It would also help the high numbers of industry professionals reporting burnout as a result of high levels of fraud. Those businesses who are not collaborating now should do so swiftly or risk losing out."
 

For more findings, and to download the full Global Fraud Report, please visit: https://www.gbgplc.com/the-global-fraud-report-2024/

About the research

The research was conducted via online survey by Censuswide. Censuswide surveyed 407 CXOs, VPs, directors and managers in risk/fraud, operations and compliance roles between April 26 and May 08 2024 in the following:

• Sectors: Financial services, fintech, banking, insurance, retail, gaming, ecommerce
• Countries (APAC): Australia (213), New Zealand (100), Malaysia (52), Indonesia (52), Thailand (52). Philippines (51)

Censuswide abide by and employ members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles and are members of The British Polling Council.