Behavioral intelligence unlocks personalized onboarding experiences

Alloy’s integration with BioCatch empowers financial institutions to  provide secure and personalized account opening experiences

In the early days of digital banking, the only course of action financial institutions (FIs) had when encountering risky digital applications was to block an applicant and require them to come in-branch to open an account. While this may have been enough to deter a fraudster from trying to open another account, it came at a huge cost to the customer experience and an FI’s conversion rates. 

Today’s customers expect all their digital experiences to be as seamless (and digital) as they are on Netflix or Amazon. To meet these expectations without increasing risk, financial institutions must design friction-right journeys — applying just enough friction to stop fraud without slowing down genuine users.

Alloy’s new partnership with BioCatch ingests and orchestrates behavioral intelligence at account onboarding with real-time responses and decisions to power a friction-right customer experience. 

How does frictionless account opening work with Alloy and BioCatch?

To address common indicators of attempted fraud, such as inconsistent user behavior or applications with inconsistent personally identifiable information (PII), fraud analysts need to start by understanding who is behind these suspicious actions. A customer’s idiosyncrasies, their digital habits – the when, where, why, and especially how they bank online – is all a part of their unique digital footprint and relationship with their financial institution. Incorporating technology like behavioral intelligence can provide clues as to who or what is actually behind the screen submitting an application.

BioCatch monitors a user’s physical and cognitive digital behaviors to detect fraud attempts in real time without compromising the user experience. Contrary to traditional fraud prevention controls that heavily rely on elements subject to compromise or change, user behavior can’t be stolen, spoofed, or replicated. The BioCatch platform utilizes behavioral intelligence and cognitive analysis to examine thousands of behavioral attributes during an account opening session, flagging even the most subtle indicators of potential criminal activity.

The BioCatch platform delivers powerful insights into account opening risk, including:

Application fluency: How familiar is the user with the account application process? A fraudster repeatedly using compromised or synthetic identities will demonstrate a high level of familiarity with the new account opening process compared to a genuine user.

Low data familiarity: How familiar is the user with their personal data? A fraudster does not demonstrate knowledge of personal data and may display excessive deleting and/or rely on cut-and-paste techniques or automated tools to enter information that would be intuitive to a genuine user.

Expert behavior: Does the user display advanced computer skills compared to the general population? A fraudster often demonstrates advanced computer skills that are rarely seen among genuine users. Common examples include using advanced shortcuts, developer tools, special keys, or toggling applications.

Age Analysis: Do the keystroke dynamics and swipe activity align with the user’s age group? Some behavioral patterns shift with age, such as mobile device orientation, swipe patterns, and the time it takes to switch from the Ctrl key to a letter key during data input.

Orchestrating BioCatch with additional third-party data sources for a friction-right customer experience

There’s no silver bullet in fraud prevention. To get a full picture of a user’s risk level, FIs should leverage behavioral intelligence alongside data from other fraud prevention and identity verification providers within Alloy’s identity and fraud-prevention platform. A data orchestration platform like Alloy ties together friction points and additional data points to verify the end user's identity.

For example, after a user submits their application, a synthetic fraud data provider can evaluate the legitimacy of the inputted PII to determine whether it is authentic and can be trusted to represent the original, genuine user. Another data provider can check credit or bank account opening history to see if their velocity seems reasonable or indicative of money muleing behavior. By combining data points to evaluate the overall risk level of PII, transaction history, device risk, and other factors, fraud analysts can have greater confidence in determining which applications to approve, step-up, or deny.

When a potential cybercriminal is detected, Alloy orchestrates the next steps to either block the applicant or request additional information. Depending on the risk level, friction is applied only when necessary for medium- to high-risk applicants. This is where step-up verification steps, such as ID verification and a selfie, can be orchestrated by a platform like Alloy to ensure the end user matches their official ID. In addition, technology like Alloy’s SDK can make it easy to instantly add and swap third-party step-up verification vendors, allowing financial institutions to quickly adapt to new types of fraud.

Designing a friction-right experience enables financial institutions to improve the user experience and increase customer acquisition, while targeting potential fraudsters with greater precision to prevent fraud losses.

Increasing growth while seamlessly minimizing risk

BioCatch’s behavioral intelligence is the first step in balancing safety and user experience when opening a new account. Combined with Alloy’s data orchestration functionality, financial institutions can provide a friction-right, secure digital account opening experience to their customers.