The dark side of automation: Financial institutions’ vulnerability to fraud

The rapid evolution of technology has ushered in a new era of document automation, delivering cost-cutting benefits and improved accuracy for financial institutions. However, as organizations eagerly adopt these technological advancements, many may be overlooking the potential vulnerabilities that come along with automation and, in turn, unknowingly exposing themselves to the rising threat of fraud. 

The document automation market is witnessing unprecedented growth, with over 400 companies operating in the industry. The allure of automation extends across various use cases for financial institutions, from streamlining loan applications to enhancing know your customer (KYC) checks and handling trade finance documentation. 

In order to ensure secure document processing, automated data extraction must be linked with fraud prevention and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance. By failing to consider the risks of fraud and financial crime, banks and fintech companies can become exposed to the potential of being defrauded or unintentionally facilitating serious crimes. 

While the development of technologies like optical character recognition (OCR), robotic process automation (RPA), and intelligent document processing (IDP) has streamlined document handling, these advancements have also provided ample opportunities for sophisticated fraudsters to launch automated attacks at scale, because these systems do not assess the authenticity of the documents they process 

At Resistant AI, we’ve seen cases where a single bank statement was edited and resubmitted nearly 1,000 times to a single institution over the course of 90 days — with slight modifications made to names, addresses, and numbers — in an attempt to open money mule accounts at scale. 

This flood of false documents not only forces manual controls to be introduced into automation processes—undermining the original intent and investments—but simultaneously overwhelms those controls in place, as no human could ever hope to catch the invisible document changes or their volumes, The only way to tackle these challenges created by automation is by deploying more automation: the right kind of AI can identify subtle discrepancies that are invisible to the human eye at scale and enhance risk decision-making processes.  

How Resistant AI helps financial institutions combat document fraud

It’s time for financial institutions to adopt a more vigilant approach to secure document handling. These organizations must strike a balance between embracing automation and fortifying their defenses against the escalating threat of fraud.

Learn how Resistant AI helps banks, fintechs, and payment companies fight fraud and financial crime with the power of AI.