Heroes in Business - Experian Identity Report with Kathleen Peters, Five Fraud Threats to Watch Out For in 2023

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Experian Identity Report with Kathleen Peters, Five Fraud Threats to Watch Out For in 2023. Kathleen Peters is the Chief Innovation Officer for the Experian Decision Analytics business in North America, she joins David Cogan Host of the Heroes Show to discuss the five fraud threats businesses and consumers may face in 2023. www.Experian.com

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. And I'm so excited about today. We've got a great day today, a lot of activity going on. And with that, it's the Experian Identity Report on the Eliance's Hero Show. That's right. We are bringing you these special reports with the world's leading experts about game-changing impact of the identity and the need to use reliable data to make confident decisions that safely accelerate customer engagement. And this week, we're joined by Kathleen Peters. She is the Chief Innovation Officer for Experian's analytics business

in North America. Now, Experian recently launched its annual future of fraud forecast. This is a report that shares five emerging fraud predictions that businesses and consumers should be aware of. And Kathleen, we're really looking forward to learning about what those five fraud predictions from this year's report and really how Experian is innovating to create new tools that help businesses and consumers stay safe because that is really so important. So really, Kathleen, what is the future of fraud forecast and why does Experian release this report every year? It's great to be with you, David, and thanks for asking about the report. We're actually in our third year of issuing the Experian future fraud forecast.

And as you mentioned, we put this report out each year so that we can share emerging fraud schemes and trends so that we can let folks know, make them more aware of the types of frauds that may be impacting their businesses or impacting consumers. And what we found is that the report is very useful to remind people that fraud is out there. It is all around us. And in fact, fraudsters are organized, they're sophisticated, and they're actually really innovative. So our goal in making this information available is to really help businesses and consumers be prepared so that they can protect themselves from these increasingly and emergingly prevalent types of different fraud scams. Amazing. And what are some of the fraud predictions that Experian highlights in this year's report?

In this year's report, we have a variety of situations ranging from employment scams, threats to online retailers, and even the types of fraud that are becoming associated with the peer-to-peer direct payments that we're all making using apps on our phones. And one underlying factor, David, that really connects all of these five predictions this year is that fraudsters are using everyday channels that both businesses and we as consumers are using all the time. Things like text messages or job search boards, social media, the digital payment apps that I mentioned. These are all places and applications where we as consumers have gotten very comfortable. We feel comfortable in using these types of apps and sites, and we might be less suspecting of the fraud that is occurring there.

So I'll give you one example from this year's predictions. One of the predictions that I find very interesting and relevant is the fake text messages from the boss. So a lot has changed since 2020, including the prevalence of remote work. You can see that I'm working from home today myself. Employees are communicating with their colleagues and with their managers in different ways, including text messages. So this new type of scam really capitalizes on these new ways of communicating,

and frankly can put both employees and employers at risk. Amazing. Well, and again, you're watching and listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure that you go to alliances.com, that's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com to also watch and view past episodes of the Experian Report because we have with us Kathleen Peters. She is the Chief Innovation Officer for Experian's decision analytics business in North America. Make sure that you go to Experian.com. That's E-X-P-E-R-I-A-N. So Kathleen, what can businesses though and consumers do to keep themselves safe from the fraudsters this year and well beyond? So for businesses, it's important to remember that fraud is complex. And our predictions show that businesses might be needing to be extra vigilant, especially in 2023.

So my best advice for businesses is to review your current fraud practices and the fraud mitigation tools that you have in place. Make some plans to review that process and ways to mitigate the types of attacks that we're highlighting in this year's fraud forecast. Another important aspect for businesses is to educate your employees because they really are your first line of defense and they might also be your first line of vulnerability potentially. So talk to your employees, make sure they're aware that these scams are out there as well. I also suggest working with a trusted partner, a vendor who can consult, take a look at risks or gaps that you might have in your process and help recommend some solutions that

not only will improve the situation today but put you in a better place for the future as well. Great, yeah, great tip, great tip. So how is Experian using innovation though to combat this fraud? So in talking about this type of fraud, we have a number of different ways and things that we're doing. And especially in my role at Experian, this is an area that I'm very passionate about. And we innovate in creating new products to help consumers protect themselves, as well as to help businesses fight fraud. We innovate not only in the new products that we create, but in the ways that we are reaching out to consumers. I do want to mention for consumers that one way and one way to think about protecting yourself and being more aware, consumers should regularly check their credit report. I recommend considering that.

And in fact, it was recently announced that all three credit bureaus through the rest of 2023. So for the rest of this entire year, you can get free weekly credit reports from all three bureaus by going to annualcreditreport.com. It's something that any consumer can do. All one word, annualcreditreport.com every week week just checking to see if there might be some unexpected undetected identity theft that's causing fraudulent claims and then from an overall innovation perspective some things that within my organization and my team that we're building one of the ways that we've done this is with the product we announced last year but continue to be very excited about and and that's called Experian Link.

And I know we've talked about Experian Link on alliances as well. Experian Link is enabling online merchants and retailers to link a customer's identity information with the credit card that they might be presenting for payment in real time, even when you're online. And so by using Experian Link, retailers can link names, addresses, other types of identifying information to that credit card so they can have better confidence in the legitimacy of that transaction. And that's

just one of the ways that we are innovating and making use of data to enable better identity verification and stop fraud. Well, excellent. This is very valuable information. And again, this has been the Experian Identity Report with Kathleen Peters, Chief Innovation Officer for Experian Decision Analytics Business in North America. Make sure that you go to Experian.com. That's E-X-P-E-R-I-A-N.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliances Hero Show. Thank you again so much, Kathleen.

Thank you.