5 Reasons Why You Should Hire an Outsourced Fraud Team

Your online business has a fraud problem. Now what?

You have a few options for tackling ecommerce fraud. You could build an in-house fraud prevention team… but those expenses can add up quickly and the onboarding process can take months. You could go fully automated with one of the many off-the-shelf fraud management systems… but without human intervention and maintenance, bad actors will continue to find gaps to exploit, causing your fraud loss to climb.

Why hire an outsourced fraud team?

Or you could choose to hire an outsourced fraud team. Apart from the many benefits of rural outsourcing, an outsourced fraud team will provide you with the most dynamic, most customizable, and most cost-friendly option for stopping fraud on your ecommerce platform. Below are five reasons your business needs an outsourced fraud team.

Fraud Experience

Building your own in-house fraud team often means starting from scratch, but that’s not the case with an outsourced team specializing in fraud prevention. Many fraud prevention teams (including the one at IP Services) have years of experience dealing with different types of ecommerce fraud, from purchase fraud to account takeover, subscription fraud to loyalty program abuse.

By hiring an experienced outsourced fraud team, you’ll also be able to tap into their experience with different fraud prevention methods: manual review, fraud sweeping and proactive investigations, anomaly detection, and model training – just to name a few.

It takes years to build up this type of fraud experience, and you’ll get access to all of it when you hire an outsourced fraud team. Of course, your platform is unique, and your fraud problem will need a customized approach, but experienced fraud analysts understand how and why bad actors operate, so they’ll be able to build a solution just for you in no time.

Smoother Onboarding

As mentioned above, it takes a lot of time to build a fraud prevention team from scratch. It can take months for a new fraud analyst to become truly comfortable with the process of performing a manual review, and years before they’re able to provide the high-level investigation and maintenance support that an experienced fraud team can provide. This process goes more quickly with the right onboarding and training, and that’s something an experienced outsourced fraud team will have down to an art.

The first step is hiring the right people. The best analysts are driven by curiosity; they want to know things. This is the analyst’s spirit we at IP Services look for when hiring someone for one of our fraud prevention teams. This attitude is far more important than any preexisting fraud prevention experience.

After hiring the right people, you need the right training. Hands-on training is usually the best option, with extensive shadowing of seasoned analysts. New analysts also need a chance to get their hands on the data and make their own decisions – but of course that needs to happen in a controlled environment without risk to your business or your customers. An outsourced fraud team will have the resources and experience to make onboarding a smoother process all around – and one you don’t need to worry about at all.

Built-In Team Management

Every fraud prevention team needs careful and deliberate management, and when you hire an outsourced fraud team, that management comes built in. Not only does this save you on overhead by not employing management staff in-house, but you also get the benefit of the outsourced manager’s years of experience coordinating fraud prevention support. An experienced fraud manager will know the work and be able to direct fraud analysts to areas where they’re most needed – without stifling the creative freedom or curiosity that makes a fraud analyst good.

The best fraud managers will position their team strategically to meet your KPIs and OKRs, keeping the team focused and driven, and develop policies and processes that are as dynamic as the fraud problem you need to tackle. A fraud manager will also handle the administration of the team – scheduling, performance reviews, budgeting, and of course reporting back to you (at a recurrence of your choosing), so you can rest assured that the job is getting done.

Flexible Scheduling

Fraud never stops and neither does a good fraud team. That’s why an outsourced fraud team will have developed a variety of scheduling options and will work with you closely to determine which best fits your business’s needs.

You may need 365-coverage, where the fraud team works every day – including weekends and holidays – to ensure the bad actors aren’t getting through your systems. This model may work best for businesses that fulfill orders daily. If you have a global business where you can expect orders to come in around the clock, a 24/7 model may be best for you.

On the other hand, if your fraud prevention needs are geared more toward proactive investigation than reactive review, you may find it more helpful to opt for an 8- or 10-hour daily model, where the entire fraud team will be online at the same time to coordinate on approach and strategy.

Whichever model you choose, the coordination of it will be on the outsourced fraud team, so you don’t need to worry about the overhead or time allocation.

Accountability

One of the most important benefits an outsourced fraud team can provide to you is accountability. If you choose to employ an automated fraud prevention system (AI or machine learning model is industry standard), an outsourced fraud team will be the objective third party between you and the model. If there are gaps in the model that are exposing your business to fraud loss, an outsourced team will be in a prime position to detect those gaps and alert your business, as well as to suggest ways to plug the gaps (via bug fixes or model adjustments).

With a quality outsourced fraud team, you will know that you’re getting the very best fraud prevention service, courtesy of the boots-on-the-ground experts who make up that team.

The fraud prevention team at IP Services has over 20 years of experience in ecommerce fraud mitigation. If your business is experiencing fraud loss, we can help. Contact us here to set up a fraud consultation.