Network International Slashes Fraud Rates in MEA with Cloud-Hosted FICO Solution

Global analytics software leader FICO announced today that Network International LLC (NI), headquartered in Dubai, has helped banks in the Middle East and Africa help prevent fraud using a cloud-hosted version of the industry-leading FICO® Falcon® Fraud Manager. More than 40 financial institutions in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and South Africa are using the solution to protect 20+ million customers, processing more than 180 million transactions, representing USD18 billion in value. Collectively, NI and FICO Falcon Fraud Manager have reduced fraud basis points of sales by 82% in 2022, and increased fraud detection rates by 25%. Network International has won a 2024 FICO® Decision Award for Cloud Deployment. More information: https://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-falcon-fraud-manager “Considering the continuously evolving nature of fraud and increased regulatory scrutiny on issuers, it is imperative for banks to establish a robust strategy, processes, technology, and resources to prevent financial and reputational losses,” said Arindam Chatterjee, group head, Safety and Security Solutions at Network International. “But deploying an on-premises fraud management solution is complex, challenging, time-consuming, and costly. FICO Falcon Fraud Manager, which we host as a service, has successfully resolved a complex puzzle for banks and payment service providers that have entrusted NI with the end-to-end responsibility of managing fraud across payment channels on their behalf.” NI adopted FICO Falcon Fraud Manager to address their customers’ unmet need to use a single platform for preventing and detecting fraud across both card (debit, credit and prepaid) and non-card (retail banking, corporate banking, alliance banking and others) product portfolios. FICO Falcon Fraud Manager at NI gives customers complete flexibility in choosing the channels they want to integrate, deploying the solution in phases and scaling their operations according to business requirements, fraud perception and regulatory priorities. It enables organizations to address fraud comprehensively with a 360° customer view using a unified platform featuring advanced AI and machine learning models for all payment and service channels. “Because it’s a hosted service, institutions in any country can use it regardless of the size of their customer base or economy, without concerns about the substantial capex of on-premises deployment and onsite support,” said Chatterjee. “NI-hosted FICO Falcon Fraud Manager suits the requirements equally well for a new bank, small bank, mid-sized bank or a large multi-national bank. We can deploy it faster than an on-premises solution for a customer, and reduce their capital expenditure, resource and training costs. They get effective fraud management from day one.” In addition to managing the anti-fraud application, environment, network and integrations with client’s payment systems, NI also provides continuous analytics and rule management services, and 24/7/365 fraud monitoring operations carried out by a dedicated team work on case investigations and disposition. Deploying Across the Middle East and Africa In some countries with stringent data residency requirements imposed by central banks and regulators, such as the Saudi Central Bank, banks cannot process their data outside their country borders. In response, NI adopted a customer-centric approach and established FICO Falcon Fraud Manager instances as close to the clients as possible, in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and South Africa. These deployments leveraged FICO Falcon Fraud Manager’s native capabilities, including:

• Infrastructure flexibility: on-premises or cloud-agnostic deployments
• Modular architecture
• Containerised components
• Scalability encompassing both vertical and horizontal expansion
• API-based interfaces
• Cross-data centre replication between production and disaster recovery

Because of these capabilities, the NI technology teams could effectively replicate one successful FICO Falcon Fraud Manager deployment across other key regions with substantial growth potential. These regions predominantly serve developing economies during the transition from cash-based transactions to digital payment systems. Lower Fraud Losses and Higher Detection Rate “To date, with a review rate of just 1.13%, we have saved an impressive amount of fraud losses, aggregating to USD9.7 million, which has provided 7.45X ROI to our clients in the current financial year alone,” said Chatterjee. One of those clients is a small-sized yet fast-growing UAE-based bank that deploys FICO Falcon Fraud Manager at an enterprise level to monitor transaction fraud across cards, retail banking, channels and corporate banking accounts. After implementing FICO Falcon Fraud Manager real-time transaction fraud prevention technology, the bank has a fraud detection rate of over 90%, more than three times as high as when they first started leveraging the solution. “FICO Falcon Fraud Manager is far and away the industry leader in fraud detection, protecting more than 4 billion payment accounts worldwide,” said Nikhil Behl, EVP for software at FICO. “We applaud Network International’s achievements in bringing this powerful solution to firms of all sizes across the region. They are helping to keep their customer’s customers safe from all kinds of fraud. Bravo!” “The judging panel was impressed by the expansive scale of Network International's deployment of FICO Falcon Fraud Manager,” added Eric Kavanagh, CEO Bloor Group and host of InsideAnalysis, who was one of the FICO Decisions Awards judges. “By providing fraud prevention-as-a-service to the region, they demonstrated a groundbreaking approach to threat detection. This innovative business model, democratizing advanced technology for a diverse range of organizations, stood out as a testament to their vision and execution, making Network International's achievement truly impressive."