case study

How Unit21 Helped Lili Reduce Fraud Loss by 50% and Investigation Time by 75%

FINANCIAL SERVICES

The Problem

When Faivusovich joined Lili in late 2019 right before it raised its Series A funding, the company was in the throes of preparing for the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. At the time, the fraud team used off-the-shelf dashboard tools and spreadsheets to root out criminal acts. These, however, needed constant attention and tweaking. Faivusovich says that the team was bogged down with administrative tasks, spending their days painstakingly entering alert information in Microsoft Excel as well as creating time-consuming pivot tables and reviewing false-positives the ineffective system identified. This left little time for them to come up with innovative strategies to block fraud.

The Problem

When Faivusovich joined Lili in late 2019 right before it raised its Series A funding, the company was in the throes of preparing for the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. At the time, the fraud team used off-the-shelf dashboard tools and spreadsheets to root out criminal acts. These, however, needed constant attention and tweaking. Faivusovich says that the team was bogged down with administrative tasks, spending their days painstakingly entering alert information in Microsoft Excel as well as creating time-consuming pivot tables and reviewing false-positives the ineffective system identified. This left little time for them to come up with innovative strategies to block fraud.

"We qualified every solution possible. The flexibility and automation of the Unit21 platform made the decision simple. Unit21 is extremely data agnostic, which means we don't need to wait for months to integrate."

Alex Faivusovich
Fraud Prevention Manager at Lili

50%

Reduction in fraud loss after adopting Unit21's Transaction Monitoring and Case management solution.

The Solution

Faivusovich and Lili needed an alternative to its manual, time-intensive processes that would help it strike a balance between good customer experience and risk prevention while continuing a growth trajectory that brought it over the 200,000 customer mark. Its toolset simply wasn’t capable of these goals, so he started looking for alternatives.

Initially, Faivusovich explored case management solutions, which he hoped would save time on manual reviews, but he soon realized that he needed more than just case management. He needed a solution that could allow his non-technical operations team to set its own business rules and develop new rules as the business grew. Faivusovich also wanted a vendor that would work with Lili as the company evolved. They were growing quickly and what worked one month might be obsolete the next.

After researching several vendors, Faivusovich moved forward with Unit21’s Transaction Monitoring and Case Management toolset. His main reasons: An easy setup, high degree of customizability, and the significant automations already built into it. He was also excited about the solution’s analytical capabilities that the Lili operations teams could use.

From the moment the company made its decision, Faivusovich was sold on Unit21 and its offering. He was especially impressed with the onboarding process, which seemed to move at lightning speed. This got the company up and running on the tool six months faster than they would have using another product on the market.

Onboarding Lili employees was easy, too. Since the tool’s user interface is simple to understand, the team was able to deploy a historical data test within a day of installation. Faivusovich was even impressed with the small challenges the company faced when everything didn’t go as planned, “There weren’t many issues, but when there was one, the feedback loop with Unit21 was incredibly fast and responsive.”  

Unit21’s tool is also pivotal in helping Faivusovich find talent that matches the skills framework he uses, which focuses on analytics over paper-pushing. “I don’t need you to write SQL, but I need you to understand the business and be inside the mind of the fraudster to catch them,” he says. Now, Faivusovich can focus on hiring creative fraud operations professionals instead of SQL experts.

Result

Upskill the fraud operations team

Unit21’s no-code solutions are upskilling Lili's analysts to execute tasks that would otherwise need an engineer or data scientist.

Before working with Unit21, Faivusovich’s team spent much of its days bogged down in administrative operations instead of focusing on creative strategies to block fraud. Now, using the Transaction Monitoring and Case Management toolset, the team can focus on analytics and expand its fraud operations strategy. This includes creating and testing new rules and identifying new logic to fight fraud. “With Unit21, I can export the data I need to so I can have the metrics to make an analysis within minutes,” Faivusovich says.

"We qualified every solution possible. The flexibility and automation of the Unit21 platform made the decision simple. Unit21 is extremely data agnostic, which means we don't need to wait for months to integrate."

Alex Faivusovich
Fraud Prevention Manager at Lili

Focus is key to success

On the flip side, the company reduced its fraud loss by 50 percent as well its investigation time by 75 percent, he says.

The most impressive stat: During the first quarter of working with Unit21 the company used its tools to uncover and capture more than $400,000 of suspected fraudulent activity.

“Now, we’re able to focus our time on analytics,” he says. The team can easily go in and set parameters for rules and data that might indicate a fraudulent customer. This means the line of business -- not the engineers or SQL developers -- are the ones testing and deploying the rules they need.

Realizing The Opportunity

This helped the Lili team morale increase right along with its customers' satisfaction. “When rules are capturing fraud fast, you’re creating a good impact for your customers. We’re also able to empower our fraud team so they feel more confident and creative. They aren’t manually looking for alerts and can push the limits of their capabilities,” he says.

Faivusovich is also excited for future iterations of the Transaction Monitoring and Case Management toolset and how the current version can be customized based on Lili’s needs. He adds, “I really like the fact that Unit21 takes feedback seriously from us. It’s important for us to have a vendor as we scale since we’re growing very fast. The way Unit21 engages with Lili is a great value proposition.”

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"When rules are capturing fraud fast, you’re creating a good impact for your customers. We’re also able to empower our fraud team so they feel more confident and creative. They aren’t manually looking for alerts and can push the limits of their capabilities."

Alex Faivusovich

Fraud Prevention Manager

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