Battling Fraud and Money Laundering: Why FinTech Companies Should Partner with Us

With crisis comes danger—and opportunity. Amid this raging pandemic, companies all over the world now have the chance to seize their moment and find out which opportunities can help them survive and grow.

This holds especially true for the FinTech industry, as demand for such services has significantly increased globally. While cashless payment methods have been around pre-pandemic, the massive public health crisis has hastened the shift to the new normal in payment processing across industries. The surge of consumers’ online spending is a result of rising transactions via e-commerce, e-wallets, online money transfers, prepaid cards, online gaming, and micropayments¹. In the United States alone, 14.2 million consumers consider the digital bank as their primary bank, according to a survey conducted by Cornerstone Advisors in July 2020². Similarly, four out of five UK consumers have used some form of online banking recently. An estimate of 14 million people or 27% of British adults have opened a digital-only bank account in the UK in the first quarter of 2021³. 

While consumers recognize the economic blow dealt by the pandemic to digital banking usage, they have also started to realize the convenience that digital payment systems offer. The rising usage of these innovative technology solutions has been closely followed by financial crimes such as fraud and money laundering. This poses a significant threat to financial technology institutions^{4 5}. 

How much can you lose to Fraud and Money Laundering? 

Every two years, PricewaterhouseCoopers, conducts a cohort study on Global Economic Crime and Fraud. Last year, they surveyed 5,000 respondents globally in 99 territories, 62% of whom are C-level executives. Results show that 47% of respondents experienced fraud in 24 months—the second to the highest number reported in the survey’s 20-year history. On average, six incidents of fraud detection were experienced by each company in the last 24 months. Further, an estimate of $42 billion was lost due to this crime⁶. 

Perpetrators are classified into three: external (customer, hackers, and vendors or suppliers), internal, and the collision of both. Fraud that was perpetrated internally is more harmful to the company. The majority of the 43% of respondents who experienced internally committed fraud have recorded $100-million losses, and for some, even more. Aside from this, internal fraud often results in civil or criminal cases against the company, which tarnish its reputation⁶.

Increasing financial crimes have led regulators in different countries to double their efforts in monitoring other FinTech companies. In the first two months of 2021, US Federal regulators charged corporations penalties of more than $200 million for violating Anti-Money Laundering laws. Total liabilities recorded in 2020 for said violations exceeded $10 billion worldwide⁷. 

TaskUs Exceeds Expectations: Success Stories 

Despite the potential threats to the FinTech industry, companies need an expert team to help secure their customers and their business. In this ever-changing world, TaskUs has been at the forefront of supporting financial institutions. As criminals become more sophisticated, innovative solutions play a critical role in ensuring safety in the sphere.  

Growing in four countries with 15 FinTech clients, TaskUs continues to exceed clients’ demands with its broad range of services. For instance, a leading challenger bank in Europe experienced a serious mishap because of the lapses in money-laundering controls and dubious hiring practices. The poor performance of their former outsourcing partner resulted in thousands of illegal transactions in the client’s digital banking system.

Our FinTech expertise led Us to immediately recognize the paramount importance of providing strong customer support, protecting privacy, and compliance with regulations. We focused on intensifying the client’s needs by securing customers’ data, and developing our Super Teammates who are highly knowledgeable on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations, financial literacy, compliance, digital banking, and fraud processes and prevention. We also launched new tools and utilized these to address the insufficient documentation and the inadequate investigation of the accounts. 

Consequently, we exceeded the benchmark metrics on quality and productivity and helped increase our client’s revenue by 85%. Through innovative solutions and our Super Teammates, the client has seen strong proof of our services’ efficiency on their overall business.  

Digital currency platforms are also attractive among fraudsters, which makes an agile and expert hybrid support partner a definite need. For a leading cryptocurrency exchange platform,  they also demand security for their customers on top of necessary process improvements. 

Through our innovative solutions, we have provided this quality client-customer support and fraud prevention support, as well as breakthrough transaction monitoring methods to ensure security on the platform. We address fraud payments, missing funds, payment method issues, consumer compliance, account hold issues, two-factor authentication, login issues, device verification processes, and account access issues. 

Aside from highly skilled Teammates who address complex and technical challenges, we also provide our clients rapid solutions to challenges, especially in the wake of COVID-19. At the onset of the global crisis,  they were the first campaign in TaskUs to utilize a bespoke Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which we created based on our existing BCP. We identified the forthcoming risks to the client’s operations and swiftly developed solutions, ensuring uninterrupted customer experience and support. The campaign seamlessly transitioned to Cirrus, our Work@Home (W@H) model, on February 19, 2020. In our W@H model, the campaign’s productivity soared from 42.86% to 86.67%.  In three months, customer satisfaction increased from 67% to 85%. This has been sustained to over 90% throughout the campaign. 

Moreover, as we continue to grow and innovate in our FinTech vertical alone, we have had 170% revenue growth last year and an impressive 196% growth rate this 2021. 

Fast-Forward: The Future of FinTech Security

Having the right service provider as a partner in combating fraud and money laundering is a must, especially as financial criminals become more creative with their methods, as technology evolves. Regulators across the globe require companies to enforce AML policies to safeguard them from possible money laundering and fraudulent activities. Alongside financial institutions’  accelerated shift towards digital due to COVID-19, revenue loss and increasing rates of fraud are the drivers of the growing AML solution market. Globally, its market size is anticipated to reach $4.5 billion by 2025 from $2.2 billion in 2020. It is expected to expand at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 15.6%⁸. 

The Answer is Us! 

With the overwhelming challenges in the space, our client’s success stories fuel Us to focus more on innovation and be equipped for the challenging times ahead. More than establishing trust with partners, we embrace clients’ mission in achieving their business goals. We opt to innovate, as we see this as an opportunity for Us to showcase our edge in providing unique fraud risk management services.

Aside from the efforts of our Information Security team, we maximize our innovative tools in protecting the data of our clients. The Yubikey Two-Factor Authentication makes use of an ID password and security verification that allows for strict monitoring of any unauthorized access. Two-Step Verification is also accessible in the client’s network.  We perform a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process to verify every customer’s identity and detect potential fraudsters. Client Due Diligence (CDD) and AML softwares also play a vital role in ensuring security. We have a fraud prevention team composed of experts in risk and fraud detection. 

Beyond these innovative tools, these are the distinctive solutions we employ to maintain high levels of security, privacy, and compliance as we provide next-generation customer experience:

• TaskUs is PCI-certified;
• We perform audits with dedicated closed workplaces in the office;
• We have profile management, wherein 100% of the team is audited for their work;
• We have a robust quality check mechanism;
• We have client analysts and certified quality checkers who ensure a high level of security; and
• We have Super Teammates!

Security is non-negotiable when it comes to our clients. We don’t settle for typical team members—hence our Super Teammates. Aside from hiring teammates with at least six months experience in Anti-money Laundering processes, they should also have a good command of the English language with exemplary comprehension skills.

As sophisticated money launderers and fraudsters continue to evolve, so do our innovative strategies in our fight against fraud and money laundering. We will also continue to focus on our quality framework and automation as we look to the future of FinTech.  At TaskUs, our clients can always count on our amazing people, technology, and accreditations to protect and grow their businesses across the globe. 

Learn more about TaskUs Fraud Risk Management and how we keep our customer data safe and secure.