New collaborative platform to help combat fraud
The first Swiss Anti-Fraud Summit was held today. This new collaborative platform was created to coordinate the fight against fraud in the payments system. Initiated by SIX and the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), the event brought together key players from the financial, telecommunications and technology sectors as well as representatives of authorities, social media companies and online retailers. The main takeaway was that coordinated collaboration across the entire digital fraud chain is essential for effective fraud prevention.
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Everyone attending today’s Swiss Anti-Fraud Summit agreed that fraud is increasingly happening via interconnected structures, many of which are professionally organised and operate internationally, which makes it hard for individual actors to combat it effectively on their own. Close coordination between all those involved along the whole fraud chain – from social media platforms to online marketplaces, telecommunications providers, internet retailers, banks and law enforcement – is vital.
New collaborative platform for dialogue between industries
With this in mind, the SBA and SIX created the Swiss Anti-Fraud Summit as a collaborative platform to help the various industries to engage in dialogue and work together in the fight against payment fraud. The aim is to share knowledge between institutions and industries and to pool resources for additional measures and joint initiatives. Representatives of several industries in the fraud chain took part in a roundtable discussion on current and future challenges as regards combating fraud and possible approaches to solving them. These were then examined in depth from the specific perspective of the Swiss financial sector during the conference.
Focus on systemic challenges and prevention
The Summit centred on current fraud patterns, perpetrator and victim perspectives and concrete approaches to preventing payment fraud. Future threat scenarios were also considered, especially those that might arise as the digital transformation progresses and fraudsters make increasing use of artificial intelligence. The discussions confirmed that fraud represents a systemic risk affecting not just one but multiple payment channels, institutions and sectors at once, whereas many existing measures are organised by individual actors working on their own. It was also stressed that prevention must be addressed earlier in the digital ecosystem, particularly in the case of platforms and communication channels. Stepping up collaboration throughout the value chain was identified as a central lever for increasing the effectiveness of measures over the long term. Specific action areas include early identification of fraudulent activity on platforms, faster interception of misuse of telecommunication channels and improved real-time data sharing – both between private actors and between the private sector and the authorities. These require clearly defined, practicable frameworks for data protection and information exchange.
Financial sector driving collaboration
The SBA and SIX work with the Swiss banks on effective payment fraud prevention and contribute to collaboration across industries with insights from the financial sector. Those involved play a key role in ensuring that digital payment systems are secure and trustworthy, which in turn bolsters the Swiss financial centre’s stability.
The Swiss Anti-Fraud Summit serves as a launch pad for stepping up collaboration throughout the fraud chain going forward, and its findings will flow into concrete initiatives.