In response to fraud attacks that increasingly target individuals, there have been continued calls to ramp up consumer education. Many financial institutions have introduced security centers in mobile banking apps that are designed to keep customers informed on the latest threats.
Although this is a positive step, as Lea Nonninger, Digital Banking Analyst with Javelin Strategy & Research, found in the reportSecurity Centers in Digital Banking: How to Tell an Empowering Story of Prevention, Detection, and Resolution that many security centers still have room to improve.
Shifting to Empowerment
In the past, financial institutions largely took the tack that security matters were better handled behind the scenes. The thinking was that it was best not to worry customers with a constant barrage of updates about potential threats.
“What we’ve seen the last five years is the banks are shifting that narrative and focusing on providing tools for the customer to improve security, because the customers are often the weakest link themselves,” Nonninger said. “There are so many things that customers aren’t doing to protect their accounts and security measures that they might not know about.”
As more financial institutions have realized that consumers are an integral part of security, they should now focus on including more education within their security centers. This can pay dividends by helping customers feel more confident in spotting and addressing fraud. In turn, they are more satisfied with their banking relationship.
Although banks have made substantial progress, creating a security center is just one step of a fraud protection plan—one that will be largely ineffectual if financial institutions stop there.
“Do they truly help to empower the customer?” Nonninger said. “One big thing that we talk about in digital banking is not just security, but security empowerment. It’s not just about being secure, but ensuring customers feel confident about their security and know what they can do to improve it.”
Measuring the Effectiveness
To measure the effectiveness of security centers, the Javelin report focused on three aspects: prevention, detection, and resolution. After a deeper examination, it became clear that financial institutions have significant room to improve.
“We looked at selected security center features to assess the availability across banks and quickly saw support for a holistic suite of features dropping,” Nonninger said. “Even though a lot of banks have security centers, they don’t often include all the necessary features that help customers prevent fraud.
“It doesn’t really help customers detect the fraud if it does occur. Then, if in the worst case it does occur, they can’t really resolve it. This is where the big problem comes in, is that we have all these security centers, but how useful are they really?”
The first step in fighting fraud, and ideally the only step, would be to prevent it from occurring.
One way to prevent fraud is to update consumers on emerging attacks. For instance, there has been a rise in phishing emails that impersonate well-known brands or government agencies. Such attacks are designed to manipulate users into making a mistake.
A dedicated article in a security center that informs readers about the hallmarks of these attacks could go a long way toward prevention. However, the study found that there was often more generalized information in security centers, which were lacking in relevant articles and interactive media that could make an impact with users.
Additionally, the way the information was organized in the security center was frequently opaque. A customer might be presented with a list of items to review or a series of menus to delve through, which could deter some deeper dives.
The End of the Road
For effective fraud detection, consumers need to understand how to monitor who has access to their account and how their money is moving. Alerts can play a significant role by notifying a customer when there is any activity that is outside the norm.
The last aspect that Nonninger measured was fraud resolution, which has been a long-term struggle for many institutions.
“It is especially important to provide tools that let customers resolve fraud in an end-to-end digital solution, which is what we saw basically at none of the banks,” Nonninger said. “That’s a big gap that if a customer even tries to stay on top of fraud—they have detected something and then they’re at the end of the road—they don’t know where to go from there.
“They can maybe call the bank, they can go to the branch, but there isn’t much in terms of digital features available to resolve this on their own.”
Fine-Tuning the Story
Another area of opportunity for banks is to centralize their educational material. Often, an article or guide might appear on the public site but isn’t integrated into digital banking.
“It should all be centralized because if the customer goes out of the way to go to the security center, that’s such a great step, and if they don’t find what they’re looking for then and there, they might not visit it again,” Nonninger said. “It’s all about creating that good experience and having everything available.”
Despite these gaps, financial institutions have made significant strides in consumer education.
“I think for me what was interesting for this report was just seeing that we are headed in the right direction,” Nonninger said. “Banks are taking note of the importance of empowering customers, and I think now it’s all about fine-tuning the security center, making sure it has all the essential parts and at the same time trying not to overwhelm customers.
“Just tell a coherent story of security features rather than just dumping everything into one place and letting the customer fend for themselves to find what’s important. It’s all about directing the customer and guiding them.”
