Experian launches fraud prevention tool, Hunter, for lenders

Mumbai, Feb 8 (PTI) Global information services firmExperian today launched a solution for the banking andfinancial services industry to detect fraudulent loan seekersat the very outset.

The new service called Hunter enables businesses toprevent costly application fraud. Application fraud is agrowing global epidemic and it occurs when fraudsters useanother person''s identity to apply for a loan or when genuineindividuals misrepresent their own information in an attemptto obtain financial services they are not entitled to.

Hunter, used by over 100 major institutions around theworld to combat fraud, is now available to the domesticfinancial institutions and Axis Bank and ICICI Bank havealready signed up to the hosted and pay-as-you-use service.

The Reserve Bank has reported 24,572 instances of alltypes of frauds of a value less than Rs 1 crore amounting to atotal loss of Rs 493 crore and 225 instances of large ticketfrauds causing a loss of Rs 1,524 crore to banks in FY10. Thenumber of reported frauds has almost doubled in the last fiveyears, highlighting the serious threat fraud poses to theeconomy.

"The Hunter will allow financial institutions to bettermanage the risk and reward of their commercial decisions. Wehave conducted proofs of concept at many leading public andprivate sector banks and the results have been extremelyencouraging and present a compelling return on investment,"Experian India managing director and country manager VikramNarayan said at the launch.