Partnership with We Fight Fraud
06/06/2024
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Ailuna announces partnership with We Fight Fraud to change the shape of financial crime prevention and cybersecurity
Creating a human firewall to tackle the future risks of fraud and financial crime
Creating a Human Firewall to Tackle the Future Risks of Fraud and Financial Crime
Many businesses recognise that tackling fraud is more than mandatory compliance of staff training – they could be doing more to support their customers as well as their employees.
At a recent We Fight Fraud (WFF) event in Manchester, the Ailuna team presented to a community of financial crime industry professionals to help them better understand how behavioural change tech around sustainability could equally be applied to
cybersecurity and fraud prevention. And the benefits of doing so, will create a human firewall across the organisation, driven by the science of how users develop more effective habits.
How do users consider risk?
For end users, as humans, we all prefer to reduce the risk of bad things happening over the pursuit of joy. This is why communications around protecting ourselves from the risks of fraud are more likely to be effective for users that have either experienced that ‘pain’ of being a victim first hand or know of someone else who has. It’s pain avoidance that is a much stronger catalyst to take action. And that’s the beauty of the content developed by the We Fight Fraud team. Through their
lived experience video based approach, they have the ability to engage an audience to generate a reaction – either through entertaining content or through shocking the audience to the risk that criminals could face.
Do check out Crooks on Campus as an example of how to engage the demographic of students who ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ when it comes to the tactics used by fraudsters involved in financial crime. It works in terms of reducing the likelihood that students will become the money mules of the future.
Effective strategies for increasing fraud awareness
Once you have got the user’s attention to the potential risks, then the next step is to provide content and knowledge that helps them to become more consciously aware of how to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of fraud.
There are many good examples of web based content that businesses provide that’s informative for their customers. For example in the financial sector Barclays produce some content specific to the needs of their business customers and HSBC provide an app for their consumers with some useful content including quizzes and video.
So is there something else that could be done to drive up the effectiveness of these information awareness campaigns? Just because these businesses have shared information, don’t think people will always act upon it.
How behavior change outperforms education in engagement
To draw a parallel with the world of sustainability, Katie Patrick in her book “how to save the
world”, contrasted an education approach versus a behaviour based approach when it comes to engaging employees:
Education approach
Put up facts about waste on posters and do a leaflet drop on staff desks
Get an environmental leader to talk about impacts (of not taking action)
Go to a conference on the topic
Ask staff to watch videos on the topic
Write on the company blog about the intention to reduce waste
Behaviour approach
Give everyone in the office something that will change their behaviour (like a reusable water bottle to save plastic)
Install equipment that makes it easy for those new bottles to be used
Get everyone to write a pledge to use these new facilities and display them prominently in the office
Add a smiley/sad face next to the new equipment when usage goes up or down
Chart the change in usage over time and display the results for all employees to see
Hence it’s a false hypothesis to believe that an education only approach will be successful.
To understand what happens when people do change their behaviours, then look at consumer action that reduced the use of single use plastics. Do you remember the time when supermarkets used to give shoppers ‘free’ bags to pack their groceries?
Back in 2014 the average person in England used to consume an average of 140 bags each year. The starting point to building better habits was the government introducing a charge for plastic bags – that had previously been provided as an unlimited free supply at supermarket checkouts. A 5 pence charge was introduced in 2015 and since then usage at the main retailers has dropped by a staggering 97%.
In this scenario education (around the need to reduce plastic waste) was reinforced by a financial incentive to change habits. It was a meaningful first step, and it worked.
What should you do – generating engagement that changes user behaviour
Enlightened businesses ‘could’ do more, by adopting a more modern approach that embeds fraud prevention based behaviours across customers as well as employees. But to do this, businesses ‘should’ consider piloting new ways of educating.
This means creating a culture where users are equipped not only with the knowledge and habits necessary to identify, avoid and report fraud risks but also are encouraged to engage and learn. And this is where we need to remember that users are first and foremost digital consumers, and where do they turn to when consuming content – it’s their mobile phone. The most engaging user experiences come from a mobile app rather than a standard website. This is because:
- Mobile apps have a more effective UI using inherent design features – advanced gestures like ‘tap’, ‘swipe’, ‘drag’, ‘pinch’ or ‘hold’ – that are intuitive for users in their everyday consumption of information
- Mobile apps offer better personalisation – through tailored communication to users based on their interests, location and usage behaviour – that leads to a higher chance of completing the take-up of actions
- Mobile apps offer a greater range of notifications (compared to the declining open and click-through rates of traditional email outreach) by using two additional types of notification – push and in-app – providing different prompts for engagement either visible to the user on their phone or via messaging
So step one of winning the user engagement battle is to consider the roles that apps could play. But then to change behaviour this information push needs to be reinforced through gamification.
Four laws of behavior change for fraud prevention
James Clear, in his definitive book Atomic Habits, shows how it’s possible to change bad behaviours into good ones through small, incremental, everyday routines that compound into much larger positive change over time. He defines four essential laws that govern the success of that behaviour change. Applying this to fraud prevention, to bring these steps to life:
- Make it obvious – don’t hide fraud awareness content, put it on display in places that users regularly visit
- Make it attractive – provide incentives and rewards for the user so that they want to take action
- Make it easy – don’t create needless friction by forcing the users through complex compliance and audit checks
- Make it satisfying – provide the user with peer recognition and praise when tasks are completed
And remember that building new habits can be hard, which requires a structured engagement program reinforced through awards, support, hacks, tips & tricks.
Reporting is also key, through a habit tracker – as an easy way to ensure the user sticks to their new behaviours, staying accountable without becoming overwhelmed.
Recognising that some tasks are harder than others to achieve then requires support through group messaging with mentors and peers to gain advice (on what to do differently to overcome the barriers) and recognition (to reinforce those new applied behaviours). Finally social media has a role to play as it has normalised likes and positive feedback comments – as a way to provide encouragement and support – so these functions should be built-in to engagement programmes as well.
What happens when people take action
If you are going to build a human firewall for your organisation – where employees and customers protect themselves – then what you’re actually doing is building a community. Think of it in terms of connecting a group of people who come together for a shared purpose, which is to combat the risks of fraud and financial crime. A real community is a space where people can learn by doing – by taking action – and getting support from peers to overcome the challenges and barriers. And remember that in terms of engagement, your customers are more likely to remain loyal if they have a community they feel connected to. Being protected – from the risks of fraud – is as much a feeling for the user as it is a quantifiable risk based ‘score’.
A thriving community is enabled by two-way communication, and that means being prepared to change how you communicate. This is because an email list or visitors to your website isn’t really a community. Why – because as communication tools, these methods are talking at them, rather than with them. So don’t forget to ask for feedback by regularly connecting with users to see how they’re doing, and what they’re getting out of the community to help them feel better protected.
Doing so will not only improve the user experience but will also drive the outcome of keeping them engaged.
Key takeaways for effective fraud prevention
So if you recognise that tackling fraud is more than mandatory training compliance, then you already know that you could be doing more. And if that involves embedding prevention based behaviours across customers as well as employees, then you should be considering how to pilot new ways of working that exploits the latest technology. This means creating a community culture – based on a mobile first communication approach – where users develop the habits necessary to identify, avoid and report fraud risks.
To create a human firewall, then it’s people that must take action. So do those responsible for fraud prevention in your organisation recognise the need to change their own ‘coulds’ into ‘musts’?
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