Cifas

Fraud Solution Profile

Cifas is the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, a membership association created to protect everyone in the UK from fraud. Established in 1988, Cifas has enabled organisations, big and small, to collaboratively fight fraud and financial crime for over 30 years to proven effect: in 2017, our members saved £1.3 billion in fraud losses.

We hold the largest dataset of confirmed fraud risk in the UK. Our members contribute over 300,000 fraud risk cases every year, sharing crucial intelligence not only with each other but with law enforcement, helping support the investigation and prosecution of fraud and financial crime in the UK.  As a trusted partner of the UK Government, we hold and share data from government departments.

Our membership is unique in that members are drawn from across the public and private sectors: from banking, insurance, telecoms and consumer credit to charities and government bodies. All the major UK banks, as well as challenger banks such as Starling, N26, Atom and Tandem are part of the Cifas community, working to protect each other from fraud.

Using the latest cloud technology, all of our members can access data in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to protect themselves and their customers from fraud. We allow organisations a number of ways to integrate the service within their own systems: including APIs, an online portal and batch services. Cifas data can also be accessed alongside a credit reference check or integrated into fraud prevention solutions.

Our platform uses algorithms and support the use of AI to improve data matching – extending far beyond a simple name, address and date of birth match: ever expanding categories include false and fraudulent documents, device identifiers and financial details. Proactive Alerts provide actionable intelligence reports to warn members about threats to their business based on data supplied; Location Based Alerts pinpoint geographical clusters of fraudulent activity; and Aggregated Data Alerts can be generated following the aggregation and investigation of multiple members’ intelligence records in order to identify fraud at an earlier stage than previously capable.

The principle of cross-sector collaboration through reciprocal data-sharing is what makes Cifas unique. It is why we are the UK’s most successful fraud prevention network and an essential partner in the fight against fraud and financial crime.