By Andrew Jolley, CAMS | Fraud SME, FiVerity
Collaboration shouldn’t just be a blurb in your policies and procedures; it should be an operational tool in your active arsenal against financial crimes.
Fraud is no longer a one-institution or regional problem. It's a fast, organized, and increasingly complex industry that fraudsters have adopted. Now it’s our turn to strike back.
Across the fraud/AML industry, we’ve seen time and again that the most effective defense doesn’t come from any one tool, team, or institution. It comes from shared intelligence, the kind that travels faster than fraud, connects red flags across systems, and helps institutions act proactively, not reactively.
We will explore the downstream impact of collaboration and how internal alignment, and cross-institution partnerships are reshaping fraud prevention for the better.
Problem: Investigations often stall because analysts lack full visibility. This is because they’re working with limited information about partial identities, narrow transaction histories, and no context from outside their institution. They are missing vital pieces of the puzzle and are unable to see the full context of their investigation.
Collaboration Impact: Through intelligence sharing, investigators can validate suspicious details faster, confirming if an identity has appeared elsewhere, spotting behavioral patterns, or uncovering linked accounts. These missing pieces are revealed, and the picture becomes clearer.
Result: More efficient triage, reduced time to make decisions, and increased confidence in investigative outcomes. The full picture is presented in a SAR, and law enforcement have more to go on for prosecution.
Problem: Many Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) lack depth. They flag a transaction or behavior but fail to tell a compelling narrative that law enforcement can act on.
Collaboration Impact: Shared insights help enrich SARs with external touchpoints, accounts linked across institutions, behavioral red flags seen elsewhere, or prior fraud indicators.
Result: Higher-quality SARs that actually drive law enforcement engagement and downstream enforcement outcomes.
3. Smarter Pattern Recognition
Problem: AI and machine learning models are only as good as the data they’re trained on. When data is siloed, patterns are missed, and false positives increase.
Collaboration Impact: Sharing fraud typologies and cross-institution trends strengthens model accuracy and adaptability. Institutions can detect emerging threats before they spread.
Result: Improved model performance, fewer false positives, and earlier identification of synthetic IDs, mule activity, and fraud rings.
Problem: Fraudsters exploit the lack of coordination across institutions. Once flagged at one credit union or bank, they pivot and often go undetected to the next place.
Collaboration Impact: Collaborative case building exposes repeat offenders and stops them from slipping through jurisdictional cracks. By reducing the time and space in which bad actors can operate, we can severely hamper their ability to cause harm.
Result: Preemptive blocks, smarter account opening controls, and faster interdiction across the ecosystem. A safer ecosystem for your customer base.
Problem: When institutions respond in isolation, fraudsters find the path of least resistance. Silence becomes a vulnerability.
Collaboration Impact: A coordinated, visible defense makes it riskier and less profitable for fraudsters to operate. Shared intelligence raises the cost of attack and disrupts further operations for the bad actors.
Result: Criminal networks begin to feel the pressure not just from one FI, but from an industry acting in unison.
Problem: Law enforcement is overwhelmed with fragmented reports and incomplete narratives. Prosecuting fraud becomes difficult without broader visibility.
Collaboration Impact: Coordinated documentation and shared SARs give agencies a fuller view of criminal activity across multiple institutions.
Result: More successful prosecutions, better alignment with 314(b) frameworks, and growing regulatory support for secure collaboration models.
Problem: Fear, regulatory uncertainty, and operational inertia often hold back collaborative efforts.
Collaboration Impact: As more institutions normalize information sharing and see results, the culture begins to shift. What was once viewed as risky becomes standard practice.
Result: Institutions begin to embrace mutual protection. Trust builds, and the stigma of sharing risk data gives way to the power of collective intelligence.
Fraudsters move fast. But we can move faster together.
We’re not talking about theory. These are real outcomes observed across the community: stronger investigations, smarter reports, faster interventions, and safer customers.
If your institution hasn’t yet formalized collaborative fraud prevention efforts, now is the time. Whether that’s through 314(b) partnerships, industry information hubs, or cross-department playbooks the path forward is clear.
Work together. Share what you know. Act faster. Bad actors won’t slow down and neither should we.
Learn how FiVerity helps institutions collaborate securely and effectively to build stronger SARs, faster investigations, and smarter defense strategies.