Customer success story: Sky Mobile

Sky Mobile, a leading UK telecoms provider, identified an opportunity to strengthen its defences against a growing and often under-recognised threat: No Intent to Pay (NITP) fraud. This type of fraud, frequently misclassified as credit risk, was contributing to rising bad debt and undermining financial performance.

To address the challenge, Sky brought together the strongest industry specialists: Synectics, experts in risk intelligence and fraud prevention, credit risk consultancy Sagacity and analytics leader FICO.

Our shared objective was clear - enhance detection of NITP behaviours while preserving a seamless customer experience.

The results were both immediate and substantial. Within weeks of implementation, Sky observed a 1.7% reduction in missed first payments, a 1% drop in early loan defaults, and is forecasting £4.6 million in annual bad debt savings.

Read on to discover how this strategic collaboration helped redefine mobile fraud prevention and delivered measurable impact at speed.

The client

Sky Mobile is the award-winning phone network from Sky, one of the UK’s largest telecoms providers.

With a forward-looking ethos and fair treatment at the heart of its brand, Sky has grown into a well-loved household name and powerful commercial force.

The challenge

Due to its popularity and prevalence, Sky is vulnerable to high volumes of fraud in every form. However, improved ways to address and manage this are regularly assessed and implemented.

During a strategic review, Sky noted an opportunity to improve how it detects mobile phone contract applicants with No Intent to Pay (NITP) risk.

Despite being a prolific fraud typology, NITP is a notoriously hard-to-reach issue. Due to detection challenges, NITP losses are often written off as credit risk and financial health suffers.

So, Sky set out to build a new NITP strategy for mobile phone customers. They began by enlisting their data consultancy and credit risk partner, Sagacity.

Sagacity quickly noticed that Synectics – a longtime counter-fraud collaborator – would add significant value in solving Sky’s challenges. And so, along with FICO, a tripartite project was established.

The solution

Work began with a Proof of Concept to test the effectiveness of Synectics’ SIRA platform and data syndicate. The process yielded compelling results, and keen to extend the benefits, Sky quickly briefed Sagacity to coordinate a SIRA implementation.

It was agreed that Synectics’ data intelligence and counter-fraud solutions would couple with Sagacity’s credit risk analytics, strategy and consultancy, with support from FICO’s scoring mechanisms.

As the credit risk lead, Sagacity managed the project end-to-end, which included impact assessments, stakeholder engagement and overseeing the complex tri-party technical integration of SIRA into Sky Mobile’s counter-fraud journeys.

Owing to the close relationship between Synectics and Sagacity, timelines could be accelerated, with launch planning broken down into hourly increments at times.

The outcomes

Forecasts place annual bad debt reduction at £4.6m, a value that would otherwise be lost to NITP fraud.

Within weeks of SIRA implementation, Sky also noted that the percentage of customers missing their first payment had dropped by 1.7%.

These numbers far exceeded Sky’s expectations and resulted in stronger resiliency against fraudulent financial losses.

Sky also observed that the percentage of new customers defaulting on their loan within the first 4 months has dropped by 1%. This indicates that SIRA will continue to positively impact NITP and achieve Sky’s full business case.

Immediate delivery monitoring confirmed that go-live was free from critical faults, and the project’s early success is being hailed as a blueprint for fraud prevention possibilities in the tightly regulated U&T sector.