Managing Fraud Operations? Questions you should ask yourself..

Fraud management is not only tool or people, it is a comprehensive practice comprising of 8 different elements:

• Influence
• Organization
• People
• Process
• Tools
• Knowledge Management
• Coverage
• Continuous Improvement

If you are a fraud manager, you should be worried about the health of each one of these operational elements.

The purpose of this post is not to list any measurement methods (see this post for FM KPIs) around these, but to provide you with a list of targeted questions which you should ask yourself to gauge each operational element.

Each of the below written questions can be a discussion point in itself which may help you get a first hand picture for a much detailed open table brainstorming or introspection sessions & further actions.

Influence:

• Is my FM function on a driver seat or secondary role & working as a support function ?
• How should I enhance the influence of my FM function ?

Organization:

• How to ensure FM awareness keeps pace with the upgrading business dynamics ?
• How to enhance internal & external collaboration with FM function ?
• How to get higher return of investment from FM ?
• How to further reduce the fraud impact on the bottom line ?
• How to build proactive fraud management function ?

People:

• How to enhance resource competency & knowledge against current & future services ?
• Is resource acquisition better or resource development ?
• How do I safeguard myself from attrition ?

Process:

• How is my performance management ? Do I have effective SLAs and KPIs ?
• Are we creating & maintaining effective fraud policies, processes and SoPs ?
• Are we adopting and implementing best practices ?

Tools:

• Is the FM tool adapted to my business environment ?
• How do I ensure that the FM tool is fed accurate, complete and timely data ?
• Are my fraud controls effective & efficient ? How do I reduce false positives ?

Knowledge Management:

• Is my team using the FM tool effectively & efficiently ?
• Is there sufficient attention on upgrading to the required skill sets ?
• Is my team keeping pace with constant fraud mutations ?

Coverage:

• Is my current fraud coverage adequate ?
• What needs to be done to ensure new services are covered through fraud controls ?
• Am I ready for converged frauds such as financial services, entertainment etc.  ?

Continuous Improvement:

• How can we improve the fraud function’s effectiveness & maturity continuously ?
• What metrics should I use to measure health of the overall FM function ?
• Are we conducting sufficient & periodic RCA & decision analysis ?
• How to gather accumulated wisdom & actionable intelligence for improvement?