Reframing fraud prevention as a strategic growth lever in financing

Fraud prevention is no longer a control function. It’s a strategic engine powering capital efficiency, profitable growth, and long-term competitive advantage.

As industrialised fraud escalates in speed and scale, the ability to stop attacks at pace is separating market leaders from the wider sector. Those who win the race for capital and customer growth are those who shift fraud from a threat to manage, to a strategic function to harness.

The challenge: matching the pace of fraud to protect profits 

Organised financial crime gangs are now executing sharply coordinated, high-return attacks with a level of sophistication that many businesses are not yet equipped to counter.

These large-scale fraud events have a disproportionate impact on financial institutions, distorting key business metrics and suppressing growth potential:

• Significant write-offs on goods and loans that are never recovered
• Inflated Probably of Default (PD) and Expected Credit Loss (ECL) models, leading to unnecessary capital provisioning
• Operational strain from complex, resource-heavy investigations
• Overly cautious lending controls that inadvertently deter good customers

The strategic response: reframe fraud teams as profit partners 

In such a climate, the mandate for risk leadership is clear: shift from protecting losses to actively driving business growth.

Market leaders are redesigning fraud functions to better serve the big strategic picture: protecting profitability and enabling faster, safer lending decisions. Approaches include:

1. Cross-industry syndicated data

Intelligence drawn from broad, cross-sector networks enables earlier and more accurate identification of organised fraud. Syndicated insights surface the wider patterns and shared risks that criminals exploit across the market.

2. Predictive AI models

AI models trained on third-party risk data detect fraud signals invisible to rule-based systems. By interpreting subtle links - across networks, identities, and behaviours - these models accelerate decisions while maintaining risk integrity.

3. Real-time decisioning

Instant, intelligent decisioning capabilities allow lenders to stop fraud at the point of application, without introducing friction that drives away genuine customers.

Together, these capabilities reposition fraud prevention as a strategic lever. —Reducing losses, protecting capital and accelerating customer approvals.

Case in point: a market leader accelerates growth by beating fraud 

A major UK retail finance provider - powering over 350,000 credit applications annually for top high-street brands - partnered with Synectics to confront organised fraud.

Their goal was to detect hidden, coordinated fraud fast enough to keep growth on track. To meet the brief, Synectics created a bespoke predictive AI model, tailored to organised fraud and powered by Synectics’ National SIRA data consortium.

This AI + syndicated intelligence approach enabled maximum impact: accurate, real-time decisions on high-risk applications and good customer fast-tracking.

The results:

• 90% of a major organised attack stopped instantly
• 10% increase in fraud prevention, directly reducing financial exposure
• 64% faster detection speed, boosting operational agility
• 50% drop in referral rates, streamlining investigation workflows
• Significant increase in sales, as faster decisions supported conversion

 For this financing leader, fraud operations moved from control function to growth lever – delivering immediate commercial impact increasing capital headroom for the future.

The call to action: becoming a strategic partner in profitability 

Organised fraud has become a systemic threat to financing performance. But for those who act decisively, the opportunity is clear.

By harnessing cross-industry intelligence, AI and real-time actions, market leaders are shifting fraud functions from final checkpoint to critical lever in capital efficiency and commercial acceleration.

Now is the time to reframe fraud prevention. Not as a safeguard, but as a catalyst to compete, lead and grow in a market defined by speed and trust. Talk to Synectics today and we'll help you get there.