How financial institutions can protect consumers from fraud

Fraud isn’t new. But it is evolving—and becoming increasingly common. With personal data being shared across vendors, government agencies, and other entities, and scammers able to reach victims with convincing schemes across email, phone, messages, and other methods, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid falling victim to fraud.

Although the average consumer is aware of these threats, millions of people fall victim to fraud each year, highlighting the need for reliable, comprehensive fraud protection for consumers. And many consumers are relying on their financial institutions to provide this kind of protection and help them resolve fraud.

The good news? Financial institutions can provide this valuable protection, all while differentiating their services and increasing customer retention, by providing fraud protection, including identity and scam protection, as part of their offering.

Offer monitoring that keeps identities and finances safe

Modern fraud increasingly begins outside the bank—via data breaches, phishing attacks, and identity exposure that eventually leads to financial misuse. With comprehensive monitoring, financial institutions can protect their customers from fraud and can help stop a fraud event before it can cause further damage.

A fraud protection solution provides several types of monitoring that help to prevent and detect fraud, including:

• Monitoring across credit, banking, and financial accounts

• Alerts for high risk or unusual activity

• Dark web and breach exposure surveillance

• A consolidated view of a consumer’s overall identity risk

When institutions help customers detect identity compromise early, they can help consumers reduce their losses and improve outcomes.

Protect customers from the rising tide of scams

Scams are now one of the fastest growing fraud categories. This is especially true with the arrival of AI, with AI-enabled scams resulting in over $891 million in losses in 2025.

Scammers have a lengthy playbook of schemes that are designed to manipulate consumers into authorizing payments and providing confidential information.

Unfortunately, consumers don’t always have the education or protections they need to avoid these increasingly convincing scams and when they lose money to scams, they’re left with significant losses that can derail their lives.

Financial institutions can directly address this threat to consumers with a fraud protection solution, which provides:

• Ongoing education that helps customers recognize evolving scam tactics

• Real time alerts tied to known scam behaviors

• Assistance with blocking or warning mechanisms for suspicious calls, texts, and links

• Takedown support when scams are detected

Full-service identity restoration when fraud strikes

For consumers, fraud resolution is rarely quick or simple. Beyond closing accounts, recovery may involve credit disputes, document replacement, benefit fraud claims, and repeated identity theft incidents—which can stretch over months or even years.

With a fraud prevention solution, financial institutions can help consumers deal with this incredibly stressful process with:

• Dedicated specialists who manage restoration from start to finish

• Clear progress tracking and communication

• Assistance with disputes, freezes, and remediation steps

• Help covering eligible out of pocket recovery costs

When financial institutions reduce the emotional and administrative burden on customers, they turn crisis moments into loyalty building experiences.

Protection that extends beyond your members to their family

Fraud doesn’t just impact the breadwinner in a family or those with a bank account—it’s increasingly targeting the entire household. Children’s identities are misused for synthetic fraud, impacting their financial future before they even enter the workforce. And seniors, who often have investment or retirement accounts, are targeted by scammers looking to make a quick payday.

These fraud incidents can ripple across shared finances as parents and caregivers are forced to take time away from work or spend money to resolve the incident. However, with a fraud protection solution that protects the entire family, financial institutions can provide:

• Identity and scam protection for seniors and dependent adults

• Child credit checks

• Family digital safety tools that help parents manage their child’s digital experience

• Cyber protection for their families mobile devices, laptops, tablets, and more

Prevent the financial fallout of a fraud event

Although financial institutions are able to recover the funds that are lost in a fraud incident, it’s not uncommon for victims of fraud to never recover the funds that are lost, especially when the fraud involves payments to scammers that consumers authorized themselves. This can lead to long-term damage to consumers’ finances, including the inability to pay bills, rent, and other critical expenses.

And even when funds are recovered, fraud often leaves consumers with indirect financial losses—legal fees, lost time at work, document costs, or childcare expenses during recovery.

With a fraud prevention and protection solution, financial institutions can help consumers avoid the financial fallout of a fraud or scam incident with:

• Coverage for many identity theft expenses, such as legal fees, lost wages, and more

• Reimbursement for eligible losses related to scams and stolen funds

• Reimbursement for eligible costs related to data recovery

For consumers, the ability to immediately recover the costs associated with fraud is a major perk. But reducing the stress that can arise from a fraud incident is invaluable.

The strategic opportunity for financial institutions

Providing better, more valuable services to consumers is obviously a top priority for financial institutions. And while a fraud prevention and protection solution can certainly help financial institutions work toward this goal, it can also offer significant benefits to the organization itself.

By expanding fraud protection beyond traditional boundaries, financial institutions can:

• Reduce fraud losses through earlier intervention: If financial institutions can help consumers detect and stop fraud before it happens, they can reduce the potential losses that might result from fraud.

• Lower operational costs tied to prolonged fraud cases: With a team of experts dedicated to resolving fraud, financial institutions can reduce the number of calls they handle related to restoration, reducing the workload on their staff and operational costs.

• Differentiate products in an increasingly commoditized market: By offering fraud prevention and protection, financial institutions can set themselves apart from the competition by providing a service that few others are offering.

To learn more about how a fraud protection solution can transform your financial institution, visit our channel partners page.