FraudSource offers LOMA/LIMRA members to education seminars and training courses on fraud and ways to combat scammers. Yet it also encompasses FraudPulse and FraudShare. FraudPulse is a compilation of snapshot polls of member companies and their experiences with scammers and hackers on a real-time basis and what areas are being compromised. But, perhaps the most acclaimed of the FraudSource trilogy is FraudShare, a web-based portal that shares real-time information with insurance and financial services professionals who hold LOMA/LIMRA membership.
Consumer fraud has become the Federal Trade Commission’s number one reported complaint for 2018, according to the agency’s Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book released to the public in February 2019. The ‘sentinel,’ as the data book has been coined, houses every reported complaint to the FTC each calendar year and is readily accessed by law enforcement but only available to the public in the next calendar year.
This would be the first time consumer fraud has stolen the top spot since the FTC’s creation in 1914, with 1.4 million reports of a total of 3 million received reports in 2018, per an FTC press release (2/28/2019). Imposter Scams Top Complaints Made to FTC in 2018. Retrieved from LOMA.org.
With consumer fraud increasing so rapidly, the insurance and financial services industry led by research associations LOMA (formerly the Life Office Management Association) and LIMRA International Inc (LIMRA), two worldwide industry research associations to further the advancement of its insurance and financial services company membership, held a 24-hour hackathon in Fall of 2018 to create an industry-wide shared fraud combat tool, called FraudSource.
A hackathon, as defined by Wikipedia is a “design sprint-like event” in which computer programmers and software developers, graphic designers, interface designers, project managers and domain experts cram for solutions and new ideas for software projects with the ultimate goal to be a working design or prototype by the event’s end.
On September 10-11, 2018, teams of developers and fraud prevention experts from LOMA/LIMRA member companies, along with the LIMRA LOMA Fraud Prevention Team, took on the challenge to create a usable system to combat fraud that was not only preventative and proactive but interactive. The platform was FraudShare and its motto became – “Fraudsters share information, shouldn’t we?” LOMA Blog (10/17/2018). Fraud Prevention Hackathon results and next steps. Retrieved from LOMA.org.
LIMRA and LOMA have the unique position to call together the brightest and best minds in their industries right at their membership roster. No technology company has the same access or resources at their fingertips to know what areas of vulnerability are needing safeguarding better than the CEOs and CIOs within corporations.
“Fraudulent attacks at one company are quickly assessed and reported to others in the FraudShare network. The “fingerprints” that fraudsters leave behind are documented in a secure FraudShare database,” per LOMA Blog (10/17/2018). Fraud Prevention Hackathon results and next steps. Retrieved from LOMA.org.
The FraudShare prototype was debuted at the October 2018 LIMRA annual convention, with a working web-based FraudShare portal launched into active business 90 days later, per LOMA Blog (10/17/2018). Fraud Prevention Hackathon results and next steps. Retrieved from LOMA.org.
“Criminals are becoming more sophisticated in their attempts to take over clients’ accounts and exploit any vulnerabilities they can find in life insurance, annuity and institutional retirement operations,” said Robert Kerzner, president and CEO, LIMRA, LOMA and LL Global. “We believe part of a comprehensive fraud prevention system for the industry should include a tool for companies to share detailed information about how the fraud is being perpetrated in real-time. We built FraudShare, in collaboration with more than 30 financial services companies, to be the fraud information-sharing and alert system for the industry.” per LIMRA news release (10/24/2018). LIMRA and LOMA To Demo FraudShare Prototype at the 2018 LIMRA Annual Conference. Retrieved from LIMRA.org.
Informational sources include websites www.limra.com, www.loma.org, www.ftc.gov, www.wikipedia.org