CTOS IDGuard an application fraud bureau, said that it has prevented confirmed fraudulent credit applications to the tune of RM28 million in the first 12 months of operation.
Additionally, CTOS IDGuard had also flagged a further RM51 million in suspicious applications to its partners.
The initial participating group of Maybank, RHB, CIMB, Alliance Bank and Ambank has been joined by BMW Financial Services, while Hong Leong and six other banks are in the midst of implementation.
CTOS IDGuard’s data from the past one year shows that the majority of applications being flagged are credit card applications, which make up 52% of the fraud alerts generated.
More significantly, over half of the alerts are due to applications made by known fraudsters or syndicates, which is only made possible through the multiple pools of partner data analysed by the fraud bureau.
Powering the CTOS IDGuard fraud bureau is GBG’s fraud and financial crime prevention engine which incorporates the machine learning technology.
This allows it to substantially increase the system’s effectiveness of fraud detection accuracy, lower false positive rates, and further improve operational efficiency.
Survey data from GBG has shown that many financial institutions are aware that the potential threat from application fraud is likely to increase, with 51% of Malaysian financial institutions expecting cases involving stolen IDs to increase and 54% expecting scams to increase in the next year.
Apart from implementing eKYC for the digital verification of customers’ identity, IDGuard also serves as an additional safeguard to prevent potential fraud from digital application.

“We are making large strides in the battle against credit application fraud, and the increase in participating financial institutions only bolsters the effectiveness of CTOS IDGuard. Our current partners cover over 65% of the total banking assets in Malaysia.
As this grows even further in the coming months, CTOS IDGuard will be the most effective tool available to combat application fraud on the market. By reducing the prevalence of application fraud, we enable financial institutions to pass these savings directly onto consumers in the form of better rates and deals for their required credit.”
said Dennis Martin, Group CEO of CTOS Digital Berhad, the holding company of CTOS Data Systems Sdn Bhd.

“To manage higher volume of applications and more complex use cases, we are deploying our machine learning technology to bolster fraud detection accuracy and pre-empt emerging vectors for CTOS IDGuard.
Across Southeast Asia, machine learning is the top solution prioritised by financial institutions for fraud and prevention in our recent survey; integrating machine learning into CTOS IDGuard will help to future-proof financial crime management especially in digital channels for participating banks,”
explained Dev Dhiman, Managing Director of APAC, GBG.
Featured image credit: New Straits Times