Commonwealth Bank of Australia Engages SAS Institute in Fight Against Fraud

SAS Financial Crimes Platform will support the Commonwealth Bank in providing a single environment to identify, manage, analyse and prevent fraud. 

SYDNEY, Australia  (23 Oct 2006)  –  SAS Institute, the leader in business intelligence, announced today that it has been selected to provide the Commonwealth Bank of Australia with a Financial Crimes Platform to augment its existing security management program. The new platform will allow the Bank to bring together disparate data for the identification, analysis and prevention of fraud.

John Geurts, the Commonwealth Bank’s Chief Security Officer, said, "The move to an integrated financial crimes platform is an important evolution in understanding the increasing sophistication of criminals globally. The SAS platform will enhance the Bank’s ability to identify and respond to unusual behaviours or activities which may be indicators of fraud risk."

In addition to employee fraud, areas to be initially addressed with the new deployment will include enhancement of the Bank’s cheque and application fraud prevention capability. The Bank’s existing Internet fraud detection tool, Hawk-i, and the SAS Common Point of Purchase module, will also be integrated into the Financial Crimes Platform. New products and channels will be added in a risk-based approach.

Mr Geurts added, "The Commonwealth Bank is committed to protecting its customers, shareholders and business stakeholders against fraud. The SAS solution enables us to move to a fully integrated approach to how we manage the prevention of financial crime."

Gregory Smith, who is Director, Financial Services with Capgemini in Australia, and who heads up that worldwide consultancy’s Anti-Money Laundering and Fraud Practice, said, "Fraudulent attacks on banks and other organisations are a worldwide problem and are reckoned to be increasing globally by between 35 per cent and 40 per cent, year-on-year."

"Banks see that, not only are criminals adopting ever more sophisticated means, but the channels for their activity are increasing. Unless banks gain more integrated views of their customers across cards and other products, their ability to reduce fraud will be hindered."

Welcoming this new business from the Bank, Gordon Clubb, Managing Director of SAS Australia and New Zealand, said that apart from the quality and appropriateness of its solution for the Bank, "It has been most gratifying to learn that the other decisive factors in our advantage were a very successful proof of concept stage; our ability to staff the implementation wholly with our own locally based resources, and our proudly held outstanding track record in the training of local users."

"Leveraging the value provided by the reseller channel is an excellent way to drive profitable revenue growth and increase market share," says Stephen Graham, IDC Group Vice President for Global Software Business Strategies. "With this announcement, SAS is clearly stating its intention to further extend its market reach to include any organization requiring true enterprise intelligence."

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