THE PROBLEM
Reactive Management of Alterations and Counterfeit Checks Leads to a Spike in Check Fraud
Cogent Bank, a financial institution operating primarily in Central Florida, focuses on deposit operations and fraud prevention. One of the bank's goals is to adopt innovative technologies to enhance banking operations and safeguard customer transactions against fraud.
Cogent Bank faced a growing threat from check fraud, particularly involving counterfeit checks, alterations, and stolen mail. Their existing fraud detection systems — based on a manual review process within the core — lacked the ability to track how fraudsters were obtaining and using customer checks.
In fact, a single team member manually reviewed 80% of the bank’s 20,000 monthly checks, which was a resource-intensive and unscalable process that could not keep pace with modern fraud tactics.
"Most of our check fraud prior to Unit21 had been alterations, counterfeits, and mail fraud. Most worrisome though, was that we were missing how these checks were getting into the hands of fraudsters,” recalls Holly Ashford, SVP, Director of Deposit Operations.
TLDR: Problems
- Surge in check fraud, especially via alterations, counterfeit checks, and stolen mail
- No visibility into how fraudsters were obtaining customer checks
- Manual fraud detection — 80% of 20,000 monthly checks were reviewed by hand
- Lack of tools for early detection or proactive customer advisories
WHY UNIT21
Simple Overlap on Existing Tooling, Zero Implementation Time, & Immediate Customer Impact
Recognizing the need for a proactive and intelligent solution, Cogent Bank turned to Unit21 for comprehensive transaction monitoring and dark web monitoring capabilities. The solution was deployed rapidly and integrated seamlessly with their existing systems, including their core platform.
“Dark web monitoring had no implementation time, and we were able to run a 12-month look back to reveal historical exposures. This allowed us to block fraudulent checks before they were sold or cashed. Without Unit21, we would have never known those checks were out there until it was too late. ” recalls Holly Ashford, SVP, Director of Deposit Operations.
TLDR: Why Unit21
- Seamless overlay with the existing tool
- Zero downtime; implementation took minutes
- Enterprise-wide use and buy-in from multiple departments.
- Easy user experience and strong customer impact.
