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Highlights

• About 1 in 6 (15%) Thai consumers will switch to a competitor if unsatisfied with their bank’s current fraud management response
• Thais are most concerned with Account Takeover (ATO) fraud (33%), followed by card fraud (22%)
• 11 percent of Thai consumers believe banks could do more to protect them

FICO’s latest global fraud survey has revealed that about 1 in 6 Thai consumers will leave for a competitor if unsatisfied with their bank’s fraud management response. This comes at a point, post-pandemic, where almost 3 in 4 consumers say they will continue to do all of their banking online and are becoming increasingly aware of the need for strong protection against online scams.

In a market of roughly 56 million banked customers, this 1 in 6 Thai consumers represents churn of more than 8 million people, which delivers an opportunity for institutions that can best manage the problem.

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Thais Most Concerned With ATO Fraud But May Be Neglecting Other Emerging Threats

The survey of a dozen countries revealed that Thailand exceeds the global average for ATO fraud, which occurs when an unauthorized person takes control of an account. In fact, a quarter of Thai customers have been victimized by this crime, versus 18% of the global group average.

Consequently, Thai consumers were most awake to the threat of ATO fraud. A third of them said this was the type of fraud that concerned them the most. Surprisingly, only 79 percent of those who have experienced ATO fraud have reported fraud to their bank, suggesting the reporting rate may not reflect the true scope of the problem.

At the same time, there are other emerging scams that Thais may not be paying enough attention to. For instance, despite 78 percent of Thai customers planning to use real-time payments in the coming year, only 9 percent are most concerned with being tricked into sending money to a fraudster - a type of crime known as Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud.

“APP fraud is becoming a bigger problem in Thailand as we see a boom in the use of real-time payments,” said CK Leo, FICO’s lead for fraud, security and financial crime in Asia Pacific. “Fraudsters are attracted to these systems as they clear funds instantly, allowing them to deceive victims and then launder the funds through a maze of accounts.”

“Protecting real-time payments requires analytics that look for changes in customer behavior such as using accounts or devices outside of their usual habits, as well as standard anomalies such as time-of-day or frequency of a transfer. FICO has found that the use of targeted profiling of customer behavior to spot scams has yielded some impressive results with 50 percent more scam transactions detected.”

Balancing Strong Fraud Protection with Convenience

With a relatively low fraud reporting rate (39%), most customers in Thailand (87%) say their banks do enough to keep their money safe. Just 11 percent think banks could do more, but this still equates to a potential of more than 6 million customers holding negative perceptions.

When it comes to convenience, half of customers in Thailand are most irritated by transaction alerts for fraud that are late or never arrive. A further third (33%) dislike banks changing the methods used to authenticate customers.

“The uptick in adoption of digital payment modes not only expands the fraud attack surface but makes for a more complex set of customer experience concerns,” explains Leo. “This pits the need for superior fraud management against the desire for easier customer communication, authentication, and verification preferences.”

Perception of Security is Everything

The survey also demonstrated the correlation between the perceived effectiveness of a security method and people’s preference for using it.

Notably, 41 percent of Thai customers prefer to verify payments with a phone call, nearly four times greater than the group average of 11 percent. In contrast, only a quarter of Thai customers prefer text for payment verification, versus more than 40 percent of the group. Other channels including bank apps, third-party messaging apps, and email are similar to global group averages.

This data suggests that while consumers in Thailand are leading the way in digital banking and real-time payment adoption, they have diverse communications and banking preferences that do not necessarily match those of other digitally advanced markets.

“People develop a sense of trust and comfort around a way of doing things, especially if it has protected them from scams so far,” said Leo. “As a result, it takes a while for customers to develop confidence in new security methods even if they are better. Banks need to remain flexible but find ways to show new channels are trustworthy, effective and more convenient.”

The survey was conducted in September 2021 by an independent research company adhering to research industry standards. 1,000 Thai adults were surveyed, along with 11,028 consumers in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, U.K. and U.S.

About FICO

FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 205 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 120 countries do everything from protecting 2.6 billion payment cards from fraud, to helping people get credit, to ensuring that millions of airplanes and rental cars are in the right place at the right time.

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