Last year, identity fraud cost the Australian economy more than $2 billion, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, quoted recently in The Australian newspaper. And if New Zealand ’s tendency to emulate its neighbour’s trends and Baycorp Advantage’s knowledge of New Zealand organisations are any indication, a similar scenario is likely across the Tasman.

Many New Zealand banks, finance and telecommunications companies currently lack the business tools required to adequately identify fraudulent applications for credit upfront, and are therefore stung when seemingly credit-worthy customers become bad debtors. The New Zealand Herald recently highlighted the case of a foreign couple, who bought a $220,000 home with a bank mortgage after adopting established identities and settling in New Zealand.

These and similar risks proved too high for Commonwealth Bank of Australia, who began using Baycorp Advantage’s FraudCheck service in October last year and saved $190,000, as well as recovering all costs of implementing the service within the first week.

Access to FraudCheck - which contains valuable information that has been used to fraudulently obtain or evade credit - is now available to New Zealand organisations. With access to more than 25,000 such records, they would do well to learn from the experiences of their Australian counterparts.

Indeed, our FraudCheck data shows that in the past ten months in Australia , 50% of all applications for credit cards that are suspected to be fraudulent, are subsequently confirmed as such.

Find out more information on Baycorp Advantage's fraud prevention services, alternatively contact us via our website.