Spotlight
Nationwide continues to evolve in innovative ways to provide our members with extra care including protection from fraud. Leveraging our enterprise customer information database, ECIF, we now match potentially fraudulent contact information provided by third parties to our member profile data and accounts. When matches are identified, automatic alerts are sent to risk partners for further investigation and notification to our members, if necessary.

The Nationwide Financial Solution Center received a call from a potential fraudster pretending to be a Nationwide member. The individual added a phone number to our  member’s profile and inquired about making a withdrawal from the member’s life policy.

A few days later, the same phone number was suspected of being used to commit fraud at another company. The company added the phone number to an industry fraud share database, (where participating companies, including Nationwide, share contact points such as phone numbers and emails used by fraudsters).

By leveraging our enterprise capability, the compromised phone number was quickly flagged as being identified in our member’s account within ECIF and the appropriate risk teams were alerted. Fortunately, the withdrawal had not yet been made, and Nationwide was able to alert the member and protect the account.

By using enterprise assets such as ECIF, Nationwide can operationalize capabilities such as fraud prevention, at scale.  For fraud prevention alone, these tools and capabilities have helped protect millions of at-risk customer assets each year.

As we move forward, we are exploring other ways to use our enterprise assets to provide extra care to our members, such as flagging member profiles and adding information in ECIF to help with better member experiences during difficult times or personal situations.

Takeaways
1
Proactive fraud detection enhances member security and preserves brand reputation
2
Integration of advanced technology in fraud mitigation is crucial
3
Collaboration across business units is essential for the success of fraud prevention initiatives ensuring this information is shared quickly at an enterprise level