Fleet Installs Check Fraud Management Solution

FleetBoston Financial has signed on for the eRM Risk Management tool from Carreker, the company's latest offering in its expanding line of computer-based check-fraud-fighting products.

The sheaves of paper normally associated with fraud-detection reports have typically stymied banks' risk-management efforts. "What you deal with today in fraud prevention is a labor-intense paper environment," said Lou Marotta, vice president and loss-prevention manager of risk management at Fleet. "It does provide you with suspect information, but it also provides you with a lot of false positives that you have to review to come up with that needle in the haystack."

ERM Risk Management, which Fleet will begin testing this month and launch shortly after, merges all fraud-detection reports into one electronic system through an Internet browser. "It's going to bring all our fraud filters to a single tool that we can manage more effectively," said Paul Mackinnon, executive vice president of retail risk management at Fleet. The combined fraud tools will create a higher level of fraud detection, "and push the false positives to the latter part of the report," said Marotta.

By providing a complete view of an account, eRM Risk Management allows for more accurate and quicker decision-making. "Timely decisioning of check fraud suspects translates into increased loss avoidance for Fleet," said Gerry De Roche, executive vice president and director of retail services and support at Fleet. The ERM browser is flexible enough for a bank to customize its view of suspicious activities, said De Roche. "Additionally, it provides the capability to redesign workflow standards to enhance productivity and improve audit trails, resulting in reduced fraud management costs."