Every year, financial services brands in the UK are losing more than £20m each to fraudsters targeting them through contact centres, more than double the amount lost by similar companies in the US.
That is according to a new report from fraud protection and authentication company Pindrop, which claimed that in the UK one in 700 calls to contact centres were fraudulent in 2015, compared to the one in 1,700 in the US, during the same period.
Pindrop analysed over 10 million calls to major enterprise call centres in the UK and US to illustrate the extent of fraud and reveals that call centre fraud is on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic.
In calculating the average cost of fraud, financial institutions in the UK are losing £0.51 to fraud on every call. For a large call centre receiving 40 million calls per year, this adds up to an average of £20m every year.
Strong online and mobile security plus the abundance of breach data and availability of Chip and Pin technology means cybercriminals are changing tactics, exploiting the weakest link in the organisation: the call centre, the report states.
Pindrop EMEA general manager Matt Peachey said: “We define call centre fraud as any interaction between a criminal and a call centre agent. Our report shows that a criminal will make up to five calls before completing a fraudulent transaction in order to get as much information from agents as possible to then use at a later date across any channel.
“Call centre agents aren’t fraud experts. They are tasked with providing genuine customers with a great experience and as such are being targeted by criminals making them the weakest line of defence in any attack. By equipping agents with solutions to better identify a suspicious call quickly, they can also prevent the pre-fraud data gathering activities that lead to increased fraud across the phone and other channels.”
Other findings from the report reveal the majority of fraudsters attacking UK financial institutions are calling from within the UK, with domestic calls making up 72% of those fraudulent calls recorded. The report also identifies that mobile phones are the most popular device used to launch fraud attacks.