Abed Hamandi, Senior Director, EMEA Consulting, Fraud and Security Intelligence Practice, SAS, discusses industry approves to fraud detection and the steps needed to bring about the next era of protection.
As scams become more sophisticated and increasingly personal, traditional fraud detection tools are struggling to keep up, the industry must rethink its entire approach to fraud management and why the next era of protection starts with understanding people, not transactions.
A New Type of Fraud Crisis
Fraud today looks very different from what many institutions spent years preparing for. The threat has shifted from tampering with transactions to manipulating people and that shift is catching organizations off guard. In my conversations with banks, regulators, and industry leaders across the region, one message consistently stands out: fraudsters aren’t attacking systems anymore; they’re attacking human trust.
Why Traditional Detection Falls Short
For decades, fraud engines were built to detect anomalies the unusual transfer, the unexpected location, the outlier that didn’t fit established patterns. These systems performed exactly as designed. But they were never built to understand human behaviour. They can’t identify fear, pressure, or manipulation the very elements modern scams rely on.
Today’s fraudulent transactions look completely legitimate. Victims use their own device, credentials, and banking channel. The payment aligns with their usual activity. But behind the scenes, they’re being coached or guided by someone posing as a trusted figure. The transaction looks normal because the manipulation happened long before it was made.
Synthetic Identities: Fraud That Learns to Blend In
Alongside social-engineered scams, stolen and synthetic identities have become more sophisticated than ever. Created with patience and precision, these identities build credible histories and behave like real customers until the moment they strike. Static, rules-based detection simply cannot differentiate between a legitimate customer and a synthetic profile crafted to look identical.
AI vs. AI: The New Intelligence Race
We’ve now entered a new era of fraud management: AI versus AI.
As institutions deploy advanced analytics to protect their customers, fraudsters are leveraging generative AI to scale their attacks. Voice cloning, deepfake videos, and AI-generated messaging allow scams to be hyper-personalised and nearly impossible for the untrained eye to detect. At the same time, institutions are training AI to recognise subtle behavioural deviations and hidden identity links.
This is no longer a game of reacting. It’s a race of adaptation and speed matters.
Why Human-Centric Detection Is the Way Forward
Despite the complexity, I remain optimistic. We finally have the tools to defend against fraud at the level where it actually happens the human level.
Behavioural intelligence allows us to detect the subtle signs that someone is under duress. Adaptive machine learning identifies new scam patterns in real time. Network analytics exposes synthetic identity ecosystems. And AI-powered platforms continuously adjust to evolving threats.
This is the shift the industry needs: from transaction-centric to behaviour-centric detection.
As I often highlight to leadership teams: “The future of fraud prevention is understanding people as deeply as we understand data. When we combine behavioural insight with adaptive intelligence, we shift from reacting to threats to staying ahead of them”.
A Call for Industry Action
The industry is at a turning point. Legacy tools, no matter how optimised, cannot keep pace with modern threats. Financial institutions must modernise fraud operations, invest in adaptive AI, and place behavioural intelligence at the core of customer protection. This isn’t about technology for technology’s sake. It’s about safeguarding people who are being targeted in ways they’ve never experienced before.
Modern scams are evolving rapidly. Our defences must evolve even faster. The responsibility lies with all of us leaders, innovators, regulators, and partners across the financial ecosystem. It’s time to rethink, rebuild, and deploy solutions designed for the sophistication of the world we operate in today.
Image Credit: SAS
