Credit cards have always been vulnerable to theft. As security controls within the card increase in sophistication (Card Security Code - CVV2, CVC, CID; EMV chip and PIN etc.) the physical card itself becomes an ever more valuable target.
Whilst theft of cards from customers is always a risk, interception of new cards in distribution is a significant threat and a huge source of loss to most issuers. Interception may take place at the issuer, distribution channel, or point of delivery. Sophisticated fraudsters will carefully target specific types of card from the issuers portfolio that maximise opportunity and minimise risk.
Card issuers have combatted the risk of interception using enhanced delivery methods for card types and delivery locations perceived as being 'at risk'. Balancing the reduction in risk against the cost of these methods is a major challenge, involving significant volumes of fraud statistics.
InterceptIn4mer is a business intelligence system developed by FML and powered by Applix’s OLAP engine that optimises the allocation of delivery methods within a defined budget. The system provides two major services: data analysis and optimization.
InterceptIn4mer connects to the card issuer’s databases for both fraudulent transactions and cards delivered, and collects all the data required to analyse trends and identify hot areas.
InterceptIn4mer parses and classifies the data, performs aggregations to produce statistical analysis and generates alarms to pinpoint critical changes and/or high-risk situations. Through the interactive, graphical interface users are able to understand the volume of fraud, volume of delivered cards, as well as risk, of every postal-zip code by product type and delivery method. With InterceptIn4mer users are able to make decisions and take corrective actions.
Using the richness of data collected by the analysis services, as well as forecasting future volumes of card deliveries, the optimisation module in InterceptIn4mer is able to automatically identify those postal-zip code and product type pairs where investing in secure delivery methods is more effective, and so optimizes the allocation of delivery methods within budget. The system also allows its users to override its decisions and impose delivery methods for specific postal codes and product types, and run what-if scenarios. InterceptIn4mer interactively shows the cost vs. budget implications of the decisions proposed by its users.
Once the user selects or approves a delivery scenario, InterceptIn4mer generates a complete ‘delivery map,’ wherein delivery methods are specified for every postcode/product type pair- that can be exported to the downstream systems managing the production and delivery of new cards.
InterceptIn4mer allows card issuers to really improve the control of interception, allowing much more efficient use of budget and greater understanding of the problem.
