What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward!

This episode comes to you live from Money 2020 Las Vegas, where I sat down with four people whose work I admire. Angela Diaz from TD, Jared Tennison from GBank, Jeni Branter from Royal Credit Union, and Aaron Frye from Lucid Point Consulting. Together they cover bank risk oversight, quantitative fraud analytics, credit union payments and digital banking, and fraud risk consulting.

I also brought along our new fraud benchmark report for credit unions and community banks, and I used its findings to shape my questions. We talk about who owns fraud, why loss numbers rarely match from one team to the next, how scams reach members in digital banking, and why many teams shop for a new tool before they understand the one they already have. If you have been wondering what good fraud governance looks like in practice, this conversation is for you. Let’s get into it.

• How Angela Diaz carried lessons from a startup into large financial institution work, and what makes cross functional fraud collaboration work or fail
• What good fraud policy ownership looks like after the policy is written, including feedback from the people who have to apply it
• Why Jared Tennison says fraud teams can give three different answers about losses, and why first party fraud is the hardest to pin down
• How the hidden cost of fraud friction, including customers who never finish an application, rarely shows up in loss reporting
• Which scams Jeni Branter sees reaching members in digital banking, including romance scams and bank impersonation calls
• Why Jeni asks business members to meet security requirements in their contracts
• How intentional friction, step up checks, and limits based on the member’s risk can protect members without slowing everyone down
• What Angela says changes when AI agents start to transact, and why she believes risk avoidance is not risk management
• How Aaron Frye explains the second line of defense, fraud risk appetite, and why fraud ownership keeps moving from department to department
• Practical steps before buying a tool, including building requirements, inventorying what your current tools cover, and asking about fourth party risk

• Lead or support a fraud program at a credit union or community bank and want practical ideas for governance
• Are trying to explain why your loss numbers differ between teams or channels
• Are preparing to replace a fraud vendor and want to know what to do first
• Work at a smaller institution and want to build strong fraud governance with limited resources
• Are thinking about how AI agents will change accountability for transactions