In the 4th quarter of 2020, we polled the industry, “For Financial Institutions: What tools do you use to manage Mobile Deposit Risk?” There is no “silver bullet” to mobile deposit risk management. The best approaches to mobile deposit risk management has been a combination of tools, procedures and policies. The poll listed several popular tools / procedures and policies respondents could choose from and also allowed respondents to enter additional responses. In total, 27 respondents completed the poll, and contributed the following insights;
Risk Management Highlights;
Duplicate Detection
We have been surveying the industry for close to a decade on how financial institutions manage mobile deposit risk, and for the first time ever, duplicate detection tops the list. 93% of respondents use at least some type of duplicate detection. There are several types of duplicate detection, so it is important to understand the relative strength of your duplicate detection capabilities. A basic ranking from weakest to strongest capabilities might looks like this; Device, User, Account, Relationship, Channel (Mobile, Desktop, ATM, Branch, etc.), Bank-wide, Vendor-wide, Industry-wide.
Volume and Value Limits
Traditionally thought to be the cornerstones of mobile deposit risk management, volume and value limits have normally been at the top of risk tools used. However, a new train of thought is emerging which an increasing number of financial institutions are considering; that value and volume limits do less for risk management and contribute more to customer frustration and lack of adoption. This concept makes even more sense if financial institutions are able to apply soft limits, patterning, AI, item verification, duplicate detection and other newer risk tools.
Funds Availability
According to our research of hundreds of financial institutions over the years, the #1 indicator of mobile deposit losses is the financial institution’s funds availability policy. In the early years of mobile deposit, funds availability was not widely used as a risk management tool. Today, funds availability is increasingly used to manage risk, especially when combined with other “alerts” or risk identifiers.
Up and Coming Risk Tools
Check verification, deposit “patterning” Geo-location and the use of artificial intelligence are all “up and coming”, and potentially very effective risk tools. The common theme among all of these tools: Data. Data about the transaction, the user and device, and data with context. At a mid-to-high level, all of these approaches and tools can be used not only for mobile deposit, but for any payment type.
The 2020 Mobile Deposit Industry Study
This poll provides a glimpse into the insights and information to be made available via the 2020 Mobile Deposit Industry Study, conducted by RemoteDepositCapture.com. The industry survey is open until December 31, 2020. Financial Institutions who participate in the survey can receive a summary report and discounts for the webinar and full report.
Click Here to participate in the 2020 Mobile Deposit Industry Survey.