Study: AI for fraud detection to triple by 2021

While only 13 percent of organizations use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to detect and deter fraud, another 25 percent plan to adopt such technologies in the next year or two. Fraud examiners revealed this and other anti-fraud tech trends in a cross-industry, global survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), developed in collaboration with SAS.

The inaugural Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report examines data provided by more than 1,000 ACFE members about their employer organizations’ use of technology to fight fraud. Other notable trends include:

• The rise of biometrics. About one in four organizations use biometrics as part of their anti-fraud programs; another 16 percent foresee deploying biometrics by 2021.
• Increasing budgets. More than half of organizations (55 percent) plan to increase their anti-fraud tech budgets over the next two years.
• Changing data analysis techniques. By 2021, nearly three-quarters of organizations (72 percent) are projected to use automated monitoring, exception reporting and anomaly detection. Similarly, about half of organizations anticipate employing predictive analytics/modeling (52 percent, up from 30 percent) and data visualization (47 percent; currently 35 percent).

“As criminals find new ways to exploit technology to commit schemes and target victims, anti-fraud professionals must likewise adopt more advanced technologies to stop them,” says Bruce Dorris, president and CEO of the ACFE. “But which technologies are most effective in helping organizations manage rising fraud risks? The answer to this question can be crucial in successfully implementing new anti-fraud technologies.”

Complementing the benchmarking report by SAS, its online data visualization tool allows users to analyze survey data by industry, geographic region and company size. Survey respondents hail from 24 industries – mostly banking/financial services (21 percent) and government/public administration (17 percent) – and span the globe. The size of their employer organizations ranges from less than 100 employees to more than 10,000.

“The tools available for fraud prevention are now more intelligent than ever. We’re no longer restricted to merely reacting to fraud after it happens,” says Laurent Colombant, continuous controls and fraud manager at SAS. “With the right AI-enabled tools in place, anti-fraud teams can now begin to intelligently predict potential danger spots and flag up early warning signs to ensure efforts are coordinated and effective. The emergence of AI, machine learning and predictive modeling is helping investigators to pre-emptively detect fraudulent activity, allowing them to stay ahead of the increasingly sophisticated techniques being employed by criminals.”