Revolutionizing fraud detection at Techcombank

Award-winning Vietnamese bank slashes time needed for fraud detection to mere seconds using a SAS enterprise fraud solution

According to a survey conducted by the Vietnam Information Security Association, more than 50% of fraud attacks initiated through digital channels in Vietnam target banks and financial institutions. Therefore, fraud is a top priority for Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank), which is taking a proactive approach to detect and deter fraud.

Established in 1993, Techcombank is one of Vietnam’s largest joint-stock banks, with 13.8 million retail and corporate customers. Under its “change banking, change lives” vision, Techcombank serves customers through its digital banking platform, mobile app and more than 300 branches nationwide.

As part of its ongoing digital transformation journey, Techcombank established a proactive data monitoring system powered by a SAS enterprise fraud solution. This system provides new data-driven benefits in fraud detection, prevention, monitoring and resolution processes to ensure customers’ data security and maintain trust.

“The future is now,” says Joseph Vu, Director of Technology and Digital Risk Management at Techcombank,. “We are all in on digital and continuously improving technologies and operations to give our customers the best product and service experiences.”

Techcombank’s innovative, customer-centric strategy has garnered numerous awards, such as Best Domestic Bank in Vietnam 2024 from FinanceAsia and No. 1 Bank in Vietnam in Forbes’ World’s Best Banks 2024 rankings.

Tackling fraud challenges in real time

With SAS, Techcombank can stay on top of shifting tactics and new fraud schemes. The bank can easily spot anomalies for each customer and score transactions in real time. Customer behavior data is analyzed for patterns and inconsistencies every time a transaction is processed. Techcombank’s proactive data monitoring system allows its analytics team to combat fraud at an omnichannel scale.

“While many banks are reactive and may implement solutions only after fraud issues catch up with them, we made the decision to move early on this front,” Joseph says. “Working with SAS, we made strengthening our detection and investigation resources an important first step in our digital transformation.”

SAS' enterprise fraud management solution delivers key benefits, including faster speed of information, greater transparency, centralization and standardization.

“With SAS, we consolidated our fraud detection and investigation while also assigning data authorization to the right specialists,” Joseph says. “We now act faster, more effectively and more precisely in our information sharing, reporting, business rule writing, triggering alerts and investigation.”

Key benefits include:

Monitoring from a single platform – The proactive data monitoring system uses SAS to support multiple products, channels and lines of business throughout the customer life cycle. Improved data collection and analysis within the solution provides a single, accessible and comprehensive view of customers and their transactions.

Enhanced alert credibility – Techcombank now has extended investigation-management capabilities and the ability to view entities via a relationship network. This gives the bank’s investigators the visibility to focus on assessing highly credible alerts, thus increasing their operational efficiency. Additionally, automatic hibernation of alerts has reduced investigator fatigue by decreasing the number of false positives.

Ultimately, Techcombank slashed the time needed for fraud detection to mere seconds with SAS.

“Using a transaction scoring option for real-time decision making has made a big impact,” Joseph concludes. “And with the reduced false positives and supporting analysis, operational efficiency has greatly improved, significantly reducing the time needed to detect and investigate fraud.”