THE PROBLEM
Fragmented Data & Delayed Response Due To Legacy Vendors' Batch Processing
At Kinecta Federal Credit Union, banking is done differently—focusing on the human side of finance by seeing people, not just numbers, prioritizing member needs, and reinvesting earnings for the benefit of both members and the community. Because of this respectable mission, Kinecta's member experience is a foundational part of its business identity.
Kinecta was facing mounting challenges as fraud schemes evolved faster than its legacy systems could respond. Account takeovers and scams—particularly targeting younger account holders and elderly members—were eroding member trust and causing financial losses.
The credit union’s legacy fraud tool, Verafin, offered little flexibility: analysts had no control over rule-building or the ability to adapt quickly to new fraud patterns. Fragmented data across tooling created operational blind spots, resulting in duplicate or missed alerts, while day-old batch-based processing delayed interdictions that needed to happen in real time.
Combined with growing operational friction in aligning alerts, cases, and reporting for audits, Kinecta’s fraud team was left reacting to threats rather than preventing them.
Kinecta knew they had to reinvent their fraud strategy from the ground up to meet their expectation of member experience. And Unit21 rose to the challenge.
TLDR: Problems
- Rising fraud losses from account takeovers and scams targeting both young and elderly members.
- Rigid legacy system with no customizable rule-building or flexibility to adapt to new fraud tactics.
- Fragmented data across Symitar and Alkami, causing duplicate or missed alerts.
- Slow, batch-based processes delaying fraud interdiction and response.
- Operational inefficiencies in aligning alerts, cases, and audit reporting.
- Reactive posture that limited strategic growth and proactive fraud prevention.
WHY UNIT21
From Reactively Chasing Fraud to Strategically Planning Where Fraud Will Hit Next
When Kinecta began searching for a new fraud detection solution, the team focused on flexibility, speed, and self-sufficiency as critical business requirements. Their existing system, Verafin, was rigid—rules couldn’t be customized, changes required vendor involvement, and adapting to new fraud patterns was slow. The fraud landscape, however, was evolving daily.
Kinecta needed a platform that could keep up: one that integrated seamlessly with their core and digital banking systems and gave analysts direct control to build, test, and iterate rules in real time.
“When moving off Verafin, two things mattered most: real-time integration with our core and online banking providers, and the ability to easily create and launch rules on our own,” recalls Cortes.
Unit21 stood out because it promised real-time integration capabilities with no-code configurability, enabling Kinecta’s team to respond to emerging threats immediately without waiting on external developers. The ability to rapidly deploy rules, paired with visibility across multiple data sources in one place, made Unit21 not just a replacement for Verafin—but a foundation for a more proactive fraud strategy.
“With Unit21's flexible rule engine, we are tracking all activity types–Check, ACH, Wire–regardless of payment rail, in one place. For example, if we see a new trend across check fraud, we can build and publish a rule that same day.”
Most of all, the team valued how easily they could experiment, validate, and operationalize new rules, turning fraud prevention from a vendor-dependent process into an agile, analyst-driven operation.
TLDR: Why Unit21
- No-code rule building, empowering analysts to adapt instantly to new fraud trends.
- Agility and control replacing vendor-dependent, rigid workflows.
- Rapid iteration and validation through shadow mode before rules go live.
- Comprehensive visibility across channels and data sources in a single platform.
- Strategic enablement shifting from reactive fraud response to proactive prevention.
