Effective Fraud Detection at Fulton Financial

October 10, 2018 |

All banks in the US must comply with strict regulations on monitoring of potential money-laundering activity, fraud, and accounts tied to blacklisted foreign entities. Fraud risk managers navigate these regulations and potential triggers for fraud investigation in order to protect their institution from financial and legal harm and also comply with US and international law. To ensure they succeed in this mission, an holistic view of fraud monitoring data is crucial; and a single, comprehensive fraud reporting interface can do just that.

Fulton Financial Corporation, a Lancaster, PA-based supra-regional financial services company, was equipped with a host of fraud monitoring tools and databases. However, to monitor fraud across the enterprise, those multiple disparate systems resulted in labor-intensive manual manipulation of numerous data sets in huge static spreadsheets.

Systems Flow’s expertise in optimizing business systems and processes transformed this reporting burden into a seamless, automated information management solution.

Empowering Fraud Investigators

To solve this data management and reporting issue, we worked closely with Fulton’s fraud risk management group. To assist with fraud investigations and prevent risky business transactions, this team reviewed customer data and transactional data for

  • Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance
  • Executing Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Account (KYC) activities
  • money laundering indicators
  • fraudulent or suspicious behaviors
  • Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) violations
  • high-risk activities based on a given customer
  • Filing of Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with investigative bodies
  • filing of internal Unusual Activity Reports

Collaborating with this team, we identified gaps in current reporting capabilities as well as pain points experienced by users trying to execute critical banking compliance functions. We used this current-state analysis to design a solution that would solve this business problem.

Unlocking Business Data to Optimize Processes

Systems Flow provided technical expertise in creation of data maps to accurately consolidate shared data elements across the various databases. SQL queries were written to extract pertinent data and produce 24+ user-friendly Microsoft Excel views for end users. These queries also enabled Fulton’s corporate users to easily view, in one place, all fraud risk data across its numerous bank affiliates.

Upon removing the need to access multiple database instances for each affiliate, Fulton saw an immense decrease in consumption of all resources. As its IT team moved to consolidate affiliate bank data into a single corporate database, Systems Flow updated and tested the reports to ensure that functionality was maintained.

Adhering to best-practice development standards, these custom reports were developed iteratively and their processes well-documented to assist administrators and end users in maintenance of the underlying technical solution. We monitored performance of nightly batch processes that fed data from the multiple databases into the reporting database, and worked with the IT team to address any issues that arose.

Adding Value with Automated Solutions

To give users one, easy-to-use interface for accessing reports, we created and maintain a Microsoft SharePoint site of current and archived reports. We also built functionality that allows any bank user to submit an Unusual Activity Report (UAR), that is then automatically routed to a fraud investigator for review and action. UAR history is logged and tracked for investigators to manage its activity workflow.

This data automation delivered tangible value to Fulton by

  • streamlining a manual process
  • providing greater insight into potentially fraudulent activities
  • increasing regulatory and reporting compliance with fraud detection

Our productive relationships with Fulton’s business and technical teams led to successful delivery of a data solution that met business needs while adhering to IT governance requirements. Our fraud risk management solutions have empowered fraud investigators to better understand, analyze, and act upon the data in their technology stack.

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