Authentication & fraud prevention

Client Insights & Intel, part 2: Prudential Financial leverages AI-powered technology to prevent fraud, empower their agents and simplify the customer experience

Over the past few months as organisations shifted to a digital only world, most encountered higher call volumes and extensive wait times. With the spotlight centred around the customer experience and agents wanting to do the right thing for their clients, this unfortunately leaves organisations vulnerable to fraud attacks.

The second session in our virtual fireside chat series, “Client insights and intel, welcomed Greg Williamson, Vice President, Customer Protection, Information Security and IT Controls at Prudential Financial. 

Greg spoke at length about simplifying technology and why their approach is critical for improving the customer journey and delivering a better customer experience. “Like with anything we have in place, it’s about a layered approach that ultimately makes the customer experience and representatives experience better…leveraging capabilities in a more efficient manner (and allowing the agent) to focus on the customer needs and not on the 25 questions they have to answer in their head of how do I authenticate etc.”

Throughout the 30-minute discussion, Greg touched upon the value of Nuance’s FraudMiner solution, voice biometrics, enrollment, watchlist capabilities and Prudential’s collaboration with law enforcement. “It’s critical to engage law enforcement to gain intelligence and catch some of these fraudsters in action.” The tighter and closer you can get on the prevention side, the better positioned to leverage the intelligence into their strategies, adjusting in real-time to be more proactive. 

One of the most fascinating topics was our discussion around the sophistication of today’s fraudsters. Early on in the pandemic, Prudential immediately put internal programs, systems and capabilities in place to start monitoring the type of activity they were going to see. “We all know fraudsters are opportunistic but seeing the fraudsters systemically learn the product, they were becoming more advanced, leveraging cross channel activity and being very persistent.” Greg went on to state “As you listen to calls over the last several months, you can see them learning the product.  Some of the intent wasn’t to get the money, it was to gather information, testing our threshold capabilities and being very persistent with seeing if our guards were down and how we were changing or not changing, understanding the different aspects of each employer and the regulations each employer has, really taking the time to educate themselves the same way we do.”

To hear our entire discussion and learn how Prudential Financial is leveraging AI-powered technology to strengthen fraud detection and prevention, click here.

Brett Beranek

About Brett Beranek

Brett Beranek is responsible for overseeing the security and biometric line of business at Nuance, a Microsoft company. In this role for the past 12 years, Beranek has brought Nuance to a leadership position in the biometric authentication and biometric fraud prevention space. A thought leader in the field of biometrics, Beranek is a frequent contributor in industry events and the media on the topic of AI technology and it’s use by the fraud community, and how society can mitigate against these evolving threats. Prior to Nuance, he held various leadership positions in the biometrics and security industry. He has earned a Bachelor of Commerce, Information Systems Major, from McGill University as well as an Executive Marketing certificate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. Beranek is also a certified Master Fraud Prevention Black Belt professional.