Fighting Approved Push-Payment Fraud and Other Online Scams, With Santander’s Chris Ainsley

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran Beer talks with Chris Ainsley, head of fraud risk management at Santander Bank. 

Drawing on more than a 20-year history at Santander, Ainsley details how financial institutions (FIs) like his, are fighting the current spike in online fraud that utilizes elaborate schemes, to get customers to authorize payments from their accounts into the accounts of scammers. 

With it now being possible to conduct all our banking, buying, selling and a host of other transactions online, banks are tasked with educating customers about the intricate subterfuges to trick them into authorizing payments to criminals, says Ainsley. 

FIs are having “very complex conversations” with customers to save them from victimization. “It’s not just ‘why are you making a payment at 2 p.m. in a foreign country’” anymore, which often involved a stolen or cloned ATM card that the bank quickly canceled and replaced, Ainsley says. Now, it is sometimes about engaging a client at length as to why they want to make a seemingly dodgy transaction and warning them of the risk. 

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