BFA #017 | A Fraud Fighter's Luxury

What's happening Fraud Fighters?

Picture this: You're at Fraud Fight Club, in a chat that turns your perspective on how to fight fraud upside down.

Enter 'experimental budgets', a revolutionary concept shifting from reactive to proactive measures. This fresh perspective is set to redefine the rules and reshape your thinking about fighting fraud!

This conversation totally changed opened my eyes, so I needed to share it with you too.

Let's investigate further.

Read Time: ~3.45 Minutes

Luxury or Myth?

"Budget for what?" I had to ask.

I tried to keep my cool during this quick convo at Fraud Fight Club this week.

The person I was chatting with had something that really made my jaw drop. They had what they called an 'experimental budget.'

"Yeah, you heard it right," they said, seeing my raised eyebrows. "Literally a budget to experiment when it came to fraud."

I was taken aback. I mean, who gets a budget just to play around with ideas? Talk about a luxury!

This wasn't some 'save for a rainy day' kind of fund. Nope, this was a full-blown line item reserved just for testing out new ways of tackling fraud.

They were not just waiting around for fraud to happen and then react. They were actively throwing money at new ideas, new tech, new strategies, to not just handle, but predict and prevent fraud.

I gotta tell you, this was a new one for me. To have that kind of freedom, the leeway to experiment... well, it blew my mind.

What a wild concept!

Embracing Imperfection

If you’re building a fraud program, you have to take some bets. The key is to balance the short term with long term plays.

And learning to live with imperfections is key.

At any time there wills be 100s of things to improve

• Updating your fraud risk management policy

• Implementing and learning new tools

• Building reporting and metrics

• Developing SOPs

Your success will be tied to how you directly prioritize these things. More importantly, how you push back and pause things that can remain imperfect while you focus on moving the needle with other key moves. Having an experimental budget will just be wasted if you can’t prioritize properly.

Real example: We’re getting ready to launch our new product. We’ve been building out our investigation tool and fraud detection. So we paused this project allowing it to stay in it’s imperfect state.

Instead, I channeled our team's resources towards enhancing our onboarding and preparing for potential investigations. These efforts, I knew, would be pivotal in countering the expected upsurge in fraud coinciding with our new product launch.

Sure our investigation tool could’ve been better…

Is This Even Possible?

Back to my conversation at Fraud Fight Club. We were talking about this unique concept that the individual had in their arsenal: an experimental budget. But here's the kicker - this budget didn't have any strings attached. It wasn't tied to immediate revenue generation or direct fraud reduction.

It was simply a budget to test ideas.

The more I thought about it - the more I became jealous. But above all, I was struck by the absolute brilliance of it. My mind started racing with ideas. I imagined how it would be to have that kind of resource at my disposal, to freely experiment with diverse approaches to combating various types of fraud. The ball of innovation could really get rolling with something like this.

And then it hit me - why not just ask for it? After all, the one guarantee of not getting something is not asking for it in the first place.

Securing such a budget could be a game changer.

It's more than just the financial aspect. It's a platform to showcase your expertise, your innovative thinking. If you're fortunate enough to get this kind of budget, seize the opportunity. It's your ticket to explore uncharted territories, to push boundaries, to truly make your mark as a trailblazer in the world of fraud prevention. This will be the opportunity that gives you freedom to explore your ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, it may feel practically impossible to actually get this approved.

But someone out there has done it. So it’s possible…

See you again next Friday in your inbox.

​Brian

ps if you weren’t able to attend About Fraud’s first ever Fraud Fight Club hope to catch you at next year’s