HBOS cuts online fraud incidents

Down by 80 per cent over the past year

UK bank HBOS has cut incidents of online fraud by 80 per cent over the past year.

Last summer the bank started a project to protect its online credit card transactions that has resulted in a reduction in fraud and brought related cost savings.

Gordon McFadyen, fraud prevention manager at HBOS, says the technology has been very effective, with a low number of authentic transactions, so-called false positives, being blocked as a result of the new system.

'Like all financial services companies, we take online security very seriously, and the more effective tools we have to combat fraud the better,' he said.

The bank is using an application called eVision from online security vendor Cyota. It works by comparing each transaction to an automatically-generated profile of a particular customer's known behaviour.

Jon Berrill, head of card operations at HBOS, says the software has delivered a quick return on investment for the bank.

'The system achieved a significant reduction in fraud, and a very low rate of false positives, which allowed us to better manage the risk of our ecommerce transactions without causing inconvenience to our legitimate customers,' he said.