News

Bank of South Pacific, Norkom sign deal to combat growing financial fraud

August 3, 2009

Bank of South Pacific Ltd. has announced a deal with Norkom Technologies to launch Norkom's fraud-prevention solutions across its enterprise. The solutions include anti-money laundering, customer due diligence and effective fraud management.

Kevin McCarthy, BSP's general manager, says the bank signed with Norkom to comply with local and international security regulations:

We wanted a robust solution that would help us gain compliance with the regulators, not only on a local level but on an international level, in addition to helping us manage and defend ourselves against financial crimes, such as fraud and money laundering. The sheer completeness, flexibility and out-of-the-box capability of Norkom's financial crime and compliance solutions assured us that our compliance and fraud-management needs could be met in their entirety.

Norkom's anti-money-laundering solution will enable BSP to detect and prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism by monitoring, detecting and analyzing transactions and customer interaction. The customer due diligence solution allows the bank to match the degree of risk presented by each customer with an appropriate and variable level of monitoring activity, investigation and prioritization.

Norkom's multichannel fraud solution allows the bank to manage and contain fraudulent attacks initiated across all business units and channels, protecting the bank from online fraud, internal fraud, debit card fraud and check fraud, including kiting. Kiting involves the deposit of a check from one account to another for an amount higher than the issuing account holds. Kiting requires at least two bank accounts and often involves two or three banks. The money rotates in a complete circular fashion between accounts.

Bruce Quick, Norkom's director of sales and business development in Asia-Pacific, says global fraud trends are forcing FIs like BSP to take proactive steps to fight back:

We're currently seeing unprecedented levels of fraud around the globe, attacking all doorways to a financial institution simultaneously. By joining Norkom's expanding community of clients, financial institutions like BSP can avail of the technology, expertise and knowledge garnered by this community to protect it against all forms of financial crimes.