Tech Solutions Fighting Fraud

It is our mission at Bruning Bank to Assist Our Customers to Build and Maintain Wealth. We are passionate about our Mission, and we diligently work every day to uphold this mission. But, as everyone is likely painfully aware, fraud and scams are running rampant in today’s world.  An article from American Banker stated that through the end of July 2024, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, had received 300,000 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) related to check fraud from depository institutions.  In 2022 through the same timeframe, there were 290,000 reports.

As a business owner, you are not entitled to the same protection against fraud as consumers in terms of check fraud. The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has provisions around check fraud for businesses.  Generally speaking, it states that businesses have a duty to promptly review their bank statements and report any unauthorized signatures or alterations. If it fails to do this within a reasonable time, it may lose the right to claim against the bank for fraudulent checks.

People stealing your money doesn’t help you maintain or build wealth. But as our Mission states, we exist to assist you with that, so what are WE doing?

In May of last year, we implemented our Positive Pay solution to help businesses combat check and ACH fraud. Businesses are able to upload their issued checks into the system, and when those checks come in to clear, they are verified against that information using the criteria of Payee, check amount, and check number. A scoring system is in place that then scores the check, if it passes no action is required, if it fails, it alerts the customer that it needs to be reviewed. To date, this system has prevented in excess of $325,000 in check fraud.

In 2025, we are targeting to implement a supplemental check fraud system called Argo OASIS. This system has the ability to look at both consumer and business checks and adds some analytical components that aren’t part of Positive Pay. It uses transaction AND image analysis to detect suspicious activity. Transaction analysis software analyzes check writing patterns and habits to identify abnormalities such as out-of-range check numbers and check amounts, duplicates, or out-of-range transaction amounts. Image analysis software analyzes signatures and check stock to identify potentially suspicious checks. The system builds 90 days of check history to populate “reference images”. Reference images are used for both signature verification and check stock testing during image analysis.

As a bonus, we are offering both solutions at no cost to our customers. We are leveraging technology, at no cost to our customers, to prevent fraud and help them Maintain and Build on their Wealth and hopefully achieve financial success. If you would like to learn more about either of these solutions, please let us know and we will get you in contact with a subject matter expert.

-Andy Hill, Chief Information Officer-