Effectively Coping with the Needle in the Haystack Burden of Enhancing Security in Check Processing
Bear, DE, September 15, 2009 Softpro North America announced today that its holistic fraud detection software suite FraudOne has been successfully implemented by Fifth Third Bank, a leading financial services company.
â€We are happy with the implementation of Softpro‘s FraudOne software suite,†states Debbie Kossuth, vice president, Director of Bank Protection for Fifth Third Bank. â€The first few days in production have proven FraudOne to be an effective system.â€
Promise kept: Check Processing security at a new level
Fifth Third Bank was looking for a solution to take the necessary precautions required to secure the paper-based payment process and prevent losses from check fraud in a truly cost-effective manner. The Bank identified Softpro‘s holistic solution suite, FraudOne, while looking for a vendor that focuses on secure and efficient check processing. Fifth Third Bank contacted some of Softpro‘s customers who said Softpro provides significant cost savings and loss avoidance.
Debbie Kossuth continues: â€Softpro‘s support in project implementation was great. FraudOne‘s performance and Softpro‘s expertise in the field has been tremendous. We were also able to learn best practices through the vital exchange within Softpro‘s User Group.â€
Best Practice will be shared in Softpro‘s User Group
The Bank will share its experience within Softpro‘s user group which regularly exchanges best practices in secure check processing. Softpro‘s Angela Bardowell, who is leading the user group: â€I am very pleased that Fifth Third Bank has agreed to share their experience among the risk management experts within our group. The features in the FraudOne product address compliance as well as performance and quality results in a way that Fifth Third Bank no longer needs to search for a needle in a haystack to find items which may require investigation.â€
FraudOne was initially conceived in cooperation with a consortium of the largest U.S. banks. The solution is considered by many of the US Tier 1 banks to be a â€best practice industry initiative†for secure check processing and has been successfully deployed at many of the world‘s largest financial institutions since its inception.
Billions of paper checks are still written every year
Latest figures about check usage in the United States published from the Bank of International Settlements in 2009 indicate that more than 28 billion checks were written in the year 2007. The average citizen in the United States was issuing 93.5 checks in 2007. In the same year 57.4 checks per capita were issued in France, 38.8 in Canada and 26.2 in the United Kingdom. The relative importance of checks as a payment instrument in value of transactions was outstandingly high in Singapore (74.7%), the United States (52.4%) and Canada (33.5%).
For financial institutions worldwide, check processing and clearing is a significant cost factor in the payment process. The challenge for the financial institutions is to reduce the processing costs and enhance the level of security of the process at the same time. To achieve both there is an ongoing paradigm shift in IT: Systems that target a single type of risk are unable to effectively identify the relevant items and additionally produce a high number of non-fraud suspects that cost time and money to process. FraudOne consequently addresses this need with holistic approach known as â€Combined Risk Scoreâ€.
About Fifth Third Bank
Fifth Third Bancorp is a diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Company has $116 billion in assets, operates 16 affiliates with 1,308 full-service Banking Centers, including 99 Bank Mart® locations open seven days a week inside select grocery stores and 2,356 ATMs in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia and North Carolina. Fifth Third operates four main businesses: Commercial Banking, Branch Banking, Consumer Lending, and Investment Advisors. Fifth Third also has a 49% interest in Fifth Third Processing Solutions, LLC. Fifth Third is among the largest money managers in the Midwest and, as of March 31, 2009, had $166 billion in assets under care, of which it managed $23 billion for individuals, corporations and not-for-profit organizations. Investor information and press releases can be viewed at www.53.com. Fifth Third‘s common stock is traded on the NASDAQ National Global Select Market under the symbol FITB. Member FDIC.
About SOFTPRO
The SOFTPRO Group is the worldwide leading vendor of systems for capture and verification of handwritten signatures. The company is based in Boeblingen, Germany with local subsidiaries in North America (Bear, Delaware), the United Kingdom (London), and Asia-Pacific (Singapore).
The group currently employs an international staff of over 60 people, enabling more than 200 companies worldwide to streamline their document and transaction workflows.
- With its eSign Workflow product line, SOFTPRO provides solutions for securing the authenticity and integrity of documents within electronic processes, such as those required for legal contracts. For this purpose, a unique signature technology is used to extract and evaluate both the static and dynamic (biometric) characteristics of handwritten signatures.
- SOFTPRO‘s Fraud Prevention Solutions portfolio provides a holistic approach to detecting and preventing fraud in paper-based processes (such as payment transactions), as well as increasing operational efficiency using signature management and verification solutions.
Among SOFTPRO‘s customers are American Express, Bank of America, Barclays, Chase, Citigroup, Discover Financial, Fifth Third, SEB, Sunrise, Standard Bank of South Africa, UBS and Wachovia.
Since 2002, the offer to secure electronic documents with handwritten signatures extended the customer portfolio of SOFTPRO to other industries such as banking and insurance, telecommunication, health and pharmacuticals, retail, government, automotive and logistics.
Frost & Sullivan, one of the leading growth consulting companies worldwide, presented SOFTPRO GmbH with its Customer Service Leadership Award for having excelled in serving its customers and gaining superior customer satisfaction levels. This award recognizes the company that has gained the best insights into customer needs and product demands.
SOFTPRO is privately owned.
SOFTPRO‘s partners include: A2iA, Adobe, Betasystems, Disoft, Fujitsu, Gijima AST, Gizmotech, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motion Computing, Siemens, Toshiba, TeleCash (First Data), Unisys and Wacom.
Please contact us for additional information:
SOFTPRO GmbH
Joerg-M. Lenz
Manager PR
[email protected]
Wilhelmstrasse 34
71034 Boeblingen
Germany
Phone: +49 7031 6606 0
Fax: +49 7031 6606 66
www.fraudone.com