Simran Baghara of Claims Detect Online says a new solution is set to shake up the 2020 fraud landscape…
Far from setting the festive scene for a winter wonderland, Black Friday (November 29), Cyber Monday (December 2) and the retail rush to resuscitate flat Christmas sales could store up a perfect storm in the snow globe of online refund fraud for the New Year.
With struggling high streets and industry figures from IMRG predicting slower or flat online growth, retailers are already heavily discounting to reach sales targets, a trend that opens the door to the cold wind of fraudulent refunding from those taking advantage of generous extended return periods over the festive period.
As far as we’re concerned at Claims Detect Online, the new name for National Business Crime Solution’s Praesidio, ‘non-genuine customers’ could be the key beneficiaries of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of unchallenged malicious refunds.
However, our new forensic tool, which allows retailers to share data and profile serial claimants, could help ring in the changes in early 2020.
The solution, which has the capability to monitor and analyse the audit trail of thousands of transactions across multiple retail businesses to spot suspicious claims and anomalies, is widening its search net to attract smaller retailers and complement the transaction data already provided by NBCS’s larger brands, to highlight the true extent of the problem.
As we get set for the festive period, retailers are hoping for improved sales, but holding their breath about what losses they could see in the new Year as a result of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas.
By sharing this data anonymously through our contributors, we can identify trends of genuine customers compared to those dishonest claimants taking advantage of the Christmas rush and the general melee of the festive period.
This enables fraud teams to interrogate the data and challenge persistent offenders while enhancing the experience for the genuine customers.
While contributing retailers, who have already identified millions of pounds worth of potentially fraudulent claims through the simple dashboard reporting system, as well as the modus operandi and claim matches from other users, specific confidential data is anonymised to comply with GDPR requirements.
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