No one is immune to identity theft – I know this firsthand. I was targeted while working at a financial institution where I was also a credit card customer.
One day at work, I received an internal call from the bank’s customer contact center. I was informed that someone impersonating me was attempting to gain access to my account. When the bank was unable to authenticate all the required information, they connected the impersonator to a live agent. The impersonator was also unable to get past the human contact center agent and hung up.
The agent later shared a recording of the individual using my credentials to attempt a takeover of my account – needless to say, I was shaken. Concerned that my identity had been stolen, I immediately checked my credit reports for any sign of suspicious activity. Fortunately, I avoided any lasting damage, thanks to the bank’s strong fraud detection protocols and diligent team.
Today, years later, I work for an organization that helps protect against payment, application and identity fraud. Our AI-powered fraud solutions, including SAS Fraud Decisioning on cloud-native SAS® Viya®, enable banks and financial institutions to detect and prevent threats in real-time.
Recognized leadership in scalable, AI-driven fraud solutions
Every year, SAS is recognized by industry analysts as a leader in fraud solutions. Most recently, Chartis named SAS a Category Leader in the RiskTech Quadrant® for Enterprise and Payment Fraud Solutions, 2025. The report states that SAS’s status as a Category Leader “is underpinned by the depth and breadth of its solution suite, particularly its ability to deliver full life cycle fraud management at scale.” It also notes that “at the core of SAS’s strength is its end-to-end enterprise fraud platform, which supports multilayered detection, its 'advanced analytics’ (a term referring to its AI capabilities), and configurable orchestration.”
According to the Datos Matrix: Fraud and AML Case Management report, SAS received the highest stability score among all vendors surveyed, with client retention rates exceeding 90% and sales and support staff present in all markets globally. The Datos report highlights the key features and functionality of the SAS solution, including the breadth of investigative use cases, continuous risk scoring, SAR capabilities, network generation and link analysis/data visualization, facilitated compliance documentation, and automated narrative generation.
From detection to decision: Full-spectrum fraud protection
SAS delivers industry-leading analytics and machine learning on an end-to-end fraud management platform to detect risks early, reduce false positives, minimize disruptions to the customer experience, and protect institutional reputation. The cloud-native SAS fraud solution delivers real-time decisioning across multiple fraud types, using AI-powered technology to stay ahead of emerging threats. By integrating internal and external data sources to enrich events with contextual channel insights, the solution eliminates silos, instantly detects suspicious patterns and accelerates fraud responses.
SAS adapts to the evolving fraud landscape with agility. By integrating multiple capabilities, including alert management, case investigation, automation and predictive analytics, organizations can respond swiftly to evolving threats while maintaining operational efficiency.
AI’s role on the front lines of modern fraud defense
My experience with identity theft happened before AI-generated scams and deepfakes became commonplace. Today, identity fraud is on the rise. Financial institutions are battling increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes, including the widespread use of AI by fraudsters to create synthetic identities and automate fraud attacks.
In a recent SAS and Economist Impact report, 54% of surveyed banking executives cited the rising complexity of fraud tactics as their biggest challenge.
To stay ahead, financial institutions around the world are adopting AI and machine learning technologies to analyze patterns, anomalies, and behaviors that signal potential fraud. AI-driven models can process vast amounts of data in real-time and identify potential threats that traditional systems might miss. By analyzing a combination of biometric data, geolocation and device intelligence, these AI-powered systems enhance fraud detection accuracy and help prevent the creation of synthetic identities and account takeovers.
AI also streamlines internal operations, freeing up human analysts to focus on higher-value tasks and strategic decision-making. Generative AI can further assist by refining fraud rules through natural language input and generating synthetic data to train models, improving accuracy even when tagged data is limited.
Innovation that endures – and evolves
Times have changed since my experience, but one thing remains constant: SAS’s commitment to its financial services clients. For nearly 50 years, SAS has partnered with banks and financial institutions worldwide, serving more than 1,600 organizations across 92 countries – including 90 of the world’s top 100 banks.
SAS is a forward-thinking leader in fraud prevention and detection, offering an enterprise approach to AI-driven data orchestration and decisioning. By helping banks protect against fraud and financial crimes, SAS ultimately safeguards the people behind the accounts – me, you, your loved ones and your customers.
With SAS as your partner, you gain one of the world’s most trusted and proven allies in the fight against fraud and financial crime. Because in a world where fraud never stands still, neither should your defenses.
