Nationwide building society achieves market leading fraud reduction

Fraud threatens UK-issued cards

Fraud on UK-issued cards has been increasing steadily, and financial institutions are facing an ongoing battle to beat fraudsters whilst protecting their customers. Nationwide Building Society, like all other financial institutions, experienced the impact of the growing problem of fraud across the industry, especially concerning its debit card portfolio.

As such, Nationwide Building Society initially approached ACI to build a database of debit card transaction history to reduce debit card fraud. After the initial phase of the project was complete, it became clear that ACI Fraud Management for Banking would be able to deliver many more benefits for the building society in terms of detecting and preventing fraud.

ACI fraud management for banking attacks fraud schemes

ACI Fraud Management for Banking was implemented with a feed from ACI’s BASE24 product that Nationwide uses for processing debit card payment transactions. ACI Fraud Management for Banking is a comprehensive fraud detection solution to help card issuers, merchants, acquirers and financial institutions combat fraud schemes. From strategic user-defined rules to powerful neural network technology using custom modeling techniques, the solution provides the means to cost-effectively reduce losses and limit an organization’s risk exposure. ACI’s solution was implemented with the Tieback functionality, allowing selective rules to automatically change card statuses on BASE24, along with card blocking capabilities.

ACI also assisted Nationwide in adding a real time feed to its fraud analysis system, allowing the team to deploy real-time rules that are able to decline transactions during the online authorization process. This element went live following a twelve-week project delivery.

In addition to providing the solution, ACI also provided project management, business consulting and technical assistance to Nationwide during the integration and implementation of the solution.

Fraud drops 80% at Nationwide

Following the implementation of ACI’s solution, the fraud levels on Nationwide’s debit card fraud portfolio dropped by around 80 percent.

Two months after implementation, Nationwide’s debit card fraud losses were the lowest for over four years and reversed the trend experienced by the industry of 18 percent year-on-year increases.

Nationwide has been awarded the Banking Technology Magazine Award for Best Use of IT in Retail Banking for its use of ACI’s solutions in fraud prevention and detection. In addition, Nationwide’s fight against card fraud has been recognized by Visa as “an incredible story” and puts ACI Worldwide at the forefront of card fraud detection.