Why Financial Institutions Need CFEs to Combat Fraud

Reasons Why Financial Institutions Need CFEs to Combat Fraudulent Incidents

Financial institutions struggle with fraud-related incidents every year, causing billions in losses and reputation damage while restricting economic growth. This is further escalated by the rapid adoption of digital payments, the evolving financial operations framework, and the sophisticated threat types. This makes it crucial for financial institutions to leverage the myriad of benefits a certified fraud examiner (CFE) brings to their operational safety and efficiency. 

This blog explores the reasons why financial institutions need CFEs to combat fraudulent incidents.

• Creating a streamlined framework to identify internal and external frauds: While external frauds such as social engineering or phishing have the maximum impact on financial institutions owing to their nature of attacks, they do rely on internal employees as well for making their malicious attempts successful. Certified fraud examiners focus on the holistic approach to combating fraud by identifying and preventing both external and internal fraud through robust and tailored strategies. 
• Assist in designing a database for potential threats: Financial institutions need to be aware of the active and emerging threats that can pose a threat to their security, finances, and reputation. CFEs help financial institutions collect fraud data from varied sources that offers a comprehensive view of the potential fraud ecosystem and helps the organization make informed decisions. 
• Organizes regular employee awareness training: Employees are the most important assets for an organization, and protecting them as well as educating them is crucial to maintaining the security posture of financial institutions. Certified fraud examiners, being specialists in identifying and preventing fraud, are the ideal trainers to train the organization’s employees on policies, evolving threats, how they can penetrate systems and networks, and how to be vigilant against such frauds. 
• Monitors transactions in real-time: Transaction monitoring is only to comply with the guidelines but also to deter fraud from impacting financial institutions. CFEs ensure that a financial institution is resilient towards fraud by adhering to the standards. They also perform behavioral analysis to establish a baseline for customers and flag and potential malicious attempts. 
• Stresses the importance of multi-layer security systems and implements them in place: Every robust financial institution should follow a multi-faceted approach to safety by including physical, administrative, and technical controls in place. CFEs ensure this compliance by leveraging tools and technology and implementing them to instate safety measures and reduce risk exposure. 

Certified fraud examiners leverage their skills and knowledge garnered during their training, as well as the ACFE resources that help them navigate the complexities of fraudulent incidents penetrating financial institutions. Moreover, they coordinate with departments, stakeholders, government institutions, and specialists across the globe to stay up-to-date on evolving threats that loom over financial institutions and how best to devise strategies that can minimize its impact on organizations as well as the national economy as a whole.