Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial services industry was experiencing a significant increase in synthetic ID fraud. Per a report published by Aite-Novarica Group, US credit card synthetic identity losses were expected to increase by over 55% from $580M in 2015 to a projected $1.3B in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many fraudsters shifted their focus to easier ways of maximizing their ROI, such as taking advantage of taxpayer funded Paycheck Protection Loans (PPP). In an article written by frankonfraud.com, it is mentioned that up to 15% of all PPP loans may have been fraud, which equates to $76B of potential money stolen. Fraudsters have also taken the opportunity during the pandemic to increase their efforts on social engineering scams. Per the FCC, the industry saw a wide variety of social engineering tactics, such as robocall scams re: health and financial concerns, text scams on false advertisements for cures or bogus tests, vaccine scam calls with intent to steal valuable personal or financial information, and more.
However, as the world continues to open back up and COVID-19 relief programs subside, fraudsters are turning their attention back to Synthetic ID fraud. According to an article published by Aite-Novarica Group, Synthetic ID fraud for unsecured U.S. credit products is expected to grow from $1.8B in 2021 to $2.42B in 2023. Further, fraud executives are expressing that synthetic ID fraud is a top concern, according to…
