Greater Bank and SAS collaborate on powerful fraud and AML solution

• Powerful and efficient SAS-Hosted Managed Service Solutions delivered on Microsoft Azure to underpin new AML and fraud capabilities
• Greater Bank is three years into its digital transformation project to enhance the experience for its over 270,000 customers
• 65% of Greater Bank’s existing technology has already changed under the digital transformation process

Newcastle-based, customer-owned banking institution, Greater Bank, today announced a partnership with analytics and business solutions leader, SAS, on a powerful fraud detection/prevention and anti-money laundering (AML) solution that bolsters the protection of its 270,000-plus customers.

Financial fraud and crime threats accelerated through the pandemic and are currently soaring around the world, resulting in banks increasing their investment in fraud detection and prevention technology to keep customers safe, ensure trust is maintained and to ensure they are meeting the regulatory standards.

A new 2022 Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report survey from SAS and the global industry body, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), showed that 60% of businesses worldwide expect their anti-fraud technology budgets to grow over the next two years.

Robust anti-fraud and anti-money laundering capabilities from SAS are strategic components in Greater Bank’s digital transformation, which has been in development over the past three years. The formation of strategic partnerships has been fundamental to the bank’s objectives to strengthen and simplify IT operations, revolutionise customer experiences, and ultimately, continue to be a significant challenger to the larger banking competitors.

Greater Bank’s partnership with SAS to provide a new fraud and AML platform has been crucial in ensuring efficiency and compliance within the regulatory banking function. After engaging external advisors and exploring the market for on-premises and cloud solutions, Greater Bank sought a Hosted Managed Service.  After also reviewing leading analyst reports, they selected SAS to implement and run its fraud and AML technology, hosted on SAS’ preferred cloud platform Microsoft Azure, which will transform the bank’s cybercrime toolkit to a world-class offering that will deliver rapid staff and customer experience benefits.

Greg Nyman, Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at Greater Bank said, “Digital transformation comes in a lot of different shapes and forms. It’s large and comprehensive for us at Greater Bank – there are numerous streams of activity and various exciting changes occurring.

“In that new bank, SAS is driving solutions for fraud and AML that support our entire enterprise. There's no distinction between different channels or aspects of our bank. This is an enterprise solution by any definition, and we entered into this relationship with SAS, selecting the partner that we thought could support us with a package for our entire organisational needs.”

Implementation will see Greater Bank’s multiple homegrown, disparate IT systems transformed to meet organisational fraud and AML requirements. Despite different systems built over time, SAS is equipping the bank to significantly decrease heavy manual intervention and in turn, enhance the user experience for both employees and customers.

“In our quest to become a more agile, nimbler organisation, SAS is helping us to simplify our IT operations by eliminating the need to manage our own on-premises infrastructure. Not only does this align with our own cloud journey and strategy, but it will enable us to invest more time into creating a safe, secure, and reliable environment for our customers that ultimately allows us to focus on growth, building upon a really solid base of established trust. The AML and fraud solution from SAS is grounded in ease-of-use, real-time data insights and automation, allowing us to act more rapidly than ever before to remedy any potential threats,” Nyman continued.

Neil Vasey, Director, Financial Services, Australia & New Zealand at SAS said, “Navigating the changing business landscape over the past 12 months, we’ve seen increased reports of fraud and evolving money laundering threats. It’s a trend we unfortunately don’t expect to slow. It’s now crucial for banks to have intelligent data and analytics systems in place that reduce the threat and ensure nimble, rapid resolution.

“Greater Bank is now well ahead of the curve with its new AML and fraud solution in place. When we were initially talking to Greater Bank, we discussed an on-premises system, but ultimately, we are delivering a Hosted Managed Service on Microsoft Azure that allows the Bank to focus resources on the customer with the confidence that the technology it uses has enterprise grade support, backed with SLAs and SLTs.”

Nyman added: “The partnership with SAS has been exemplary. A real shared vision. SAS did a great job at getting us out of the starting blocks quickly. Being a customer owned bank, it means we're not beholding to shareholders. That allows us to pivot and more easily adhere to the regulatory guidelines to the best of our ability. We believe that our members and customers who ultimately own this organisation feel strongly about the risks. So, when it comes to fraud and AML, they care.”

Greater Bank and SAS have worked together since 2013 and began this strategic phase of their partnership in 2020 with the bank reaping the benefits of the Hosted Managed Service over recent months.

While it has won many awards over its lifetime as a customer-centric institution, Greater Bank’s digital transformation program has already started to bear fruit with online and mobile experience awards also entering the trophy cabinet.

About Greater Bank

Since 1945, Greater Bank has served the community as a customer owned banking institution and has grown to serve the people of New South Wales and South-East Queensland. With over 270,000 customers and more than $8 billion in assets under management, Greater Bank has been winning awards as a leader in online banking, customer satisfaction and as a leading customer-owned institution.