Barclays and FICO Win Credit Award for Excellence in Fraud Prevention

Barclays Bank’s fraud team and global analytics software leader FICO have won a prestigious Credit Award for Excellence in Fraud Prevention. The award, presented in a gala event in Wales, recognizes Barclays’ use of an innovative solution from FICO and Jersey Telecom (JT) called Scam Signal to reduce card fraud losses & protect customers from the harm caused by social engineering scams. Barclays forecast a 6% reduction in card fraud as a result of the deployment, which identified 9 social engineering victims on its first day.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/latest-thinking/solution-sheet/scam-signal-real-time-scam-detection-and-prevention

UK Finance reported losses of £450 million in the UK last year from Authorised Push Payment Fraud, where consumers are tricked into authorising payments to scammers. “Barclays recognises how impactful this type of fraud is to our customers and have supplemented our existing fraud defences with the latest technology when we suspect customers are being socially engineered,” said Nicola Winter, director of plastic fraud at Barclays Bank. “We will then intervene to ‘break the spell’ the fraudster casts. Whilst fraudsters target all segments of society it can be particularly harmful for vulnerable customers.”

Scam Signal, developed by FICO and Jersey Telecom in collaboration with the GSMA and UK Finance, uses real-time telephony data to detect potential scam activity. Scam Signal marks the first use of real-time telco data within Barclays’ analytical decisioning solutions.

Scam Signal is accessed in real time by Barclays within FICO® Customer Communication Services, integrated via an API to the respective networks via JT. If intervention is warranted, FICO’s customer communications rules and decisioning capabilities are used to present customers with personalised, highly contextualised messages, delivered in the channel of customer choice, to break the spell.

“In addition to the fraud loss reduction, Scam Signal is also having a positive impact on our customers, who have told us they feel grateful for the increased protection we can provide to help keep them safe,” said Winter. “One of our front-line colleagues wrote, ‘The new control is great. It allowed me to talk the customer out of a crypto currency scam and provide some education around investment and crypto scams.’ ”

“We are immensely proud of this award and our work with Barclays,” said Nikhil Behl, president, Software at FICO. “Barclays wed customer commitment with innovation and our partnership with them is producing fantastic results. In the fight against fraud and scams, the criminals are using the most advanced technology — banks must do the same to keep their customers safe.”

Scam Signal won the Best Anti-Fraud Solution award at the Credit & Collections Technology Awards in 2024, as well as a Silver Medal for Best Scam and APP Fraud Prevention Solution from Datos Insights in the 2024 Fraud Impact Awards.

The Credit Awards, presented by Credit Strategy, are judged by an independent panel. The full list of Credit Award winners for 2025 can be found here.

With the Barclays FICO Fraud Prevention Award, both companies are known as industry leaders in fighting financial fraud through working together and using the latest analytics.