SAS creates new division to fight fraud globally with AI and advanced analytics

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that the typical organization loses 5 percent of annual revenues to fraud, equating to trillions of dollars in losses worldwide each year. To help organizations better detect and combat the ever-present threat of fraudsters and hackers, SAS has created a new global Fraud and Security Intelligence Division. 

The division will further focus and sharpen the SAS fraudand cybersecurity portfolio. More than 400 employees in 25 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia support this focus area. SAS plans to add another 100 employees to the division over the next three years, accelerating innovation and allowing SAS to connect with customers in new ways. Fifty new positions are anticipated by year’s end. 

Organizations as diverse as Amica Mutual Insurance Co., the Georgia Department of Public Health, Landsbankinn and Société Générale use SAS® Fraud & Security Intelligence solutions to protect against the rising and evolving tide of fraud and security risks, from which no industry or organization is exempt. According to PwC's 2018 Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey, 49 percent of companies say they’ve been victims of fraud and economic crime in the last two years – up from 36 percent the year before. 

Leading the new SAS division as Vice President of Fraud and Security Intelligence is Stu Bradley, who brings nearly 20 years of industry experience fighting fraud and abuse, the last nine at SAS. He was most recently SAS’Vice President of Cybersecurity Solutions.

 “Over the last 15 years, SAS has built a reputation as the leader in fraud and security intelligence,” said Bradley. “The rise of the digital economy has been matched by the rapid spread of fraud and cybersecurity risks, making now an ideal time for SAS to redouble and refocus its leadership in this area.We want to meet customers where they are in their analytics journeys, particularly as they adopt technologies like AI, IoT and cloud. With SAS to help them, they will be even better equipped to break down data silos, adjust to shifting regulations, and safeguard against present and future risks.”

Powering anti-money laundering efforts at Landsbankinn 

All banks must balance customer service with managing risks. That requires them to have a strategy – and the right technology – to integrate data from their core banking systems and third-party sources to effectively monitor for illicit activity. For Landsbankinn, the largest bank in Iceland, finding the balance between providing service for its 120,000 customers and screening transactions for suspicious activity is crucial for its compliance staff.

“Landsbankinn seeks to fulfill the strictest requirements regarding money laundering, criminal financing and other illegal activities,” says Thordur Orlygsson, Chief Compliance Officer for Landsbankinn. “And to meet those demands, we need to have a sophisticated and robust solution.”

The company chose SAS® Anti-Money Laundering to identify patterns in its data. Landsbankinn also uses SAS Visual Analytics to provide data visualization capabilities for analysts across the organization. 

Reducing false positives and streamlining investigations while a vast majority of the transactions Landsbankinn processes won’t trigger any alerts, a handful may point to suspicious activity. That’s where the company’s compliance team comes in. 

“It’s not possible for us to look manually at all transactions,” Orlygsson says. “We need a system like SAS to help us do pattern analysis to identify suspicious transactions to be referred for investigation.”

Looking to the future

As enterprising criminals become more organized and technologically sophisticated, the analytic tools used to thwart their schemes must outpace their advances. The formation of SAS’ Fraud and Security Intelligence Division will drive greater innovation by bringing together software developers and technology professionals from across the fraud, compliance and security domains. 

SAS customers will benefit from hybrid analytic approaches with embedded machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and social network analytics. The new fraud division will also align with SAS’ risk and IoT divisions to deliver value across the enterprise on a common platform. 

Today's announcement was made at SAS Global Forum, an analytics conference, with more than 30,000 business and IT users of SAS software participating on-site and online.