India A Promising Market For Antifraud Solutions
With a large customer count of 500K+, Mikhail is helping in the platform's on vehicle advertisement as a 10+ years experienced record bearer in PE and VC with a major focus on high tech, fintech and advertisement. With a large customer count of 500K+, Mikhail is helping in the platform's onvehicle advertisement as a 10+ years experienced record bearer in PE and VC with a major focus on hightech, fintech and advertisement.
Digitization has been on an upswing in India over the past few years now. The country has not only been adding building support infrastructure for a further digitized country but has also been experiencing an influx of new users join the 'digiverse'. While this comes as great news for businesses and consumers a like, there has been one downside to this phenomenon, i.e. an increase in cybercrime. According to an industry report, the rate of digital fraud attempts originating from India against businesses went up by 28.3 percent when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
According to JuicyScore, a global provider of antifraud and risk management solution India is a highpriority market where opportunistic hackers are taking advantage of the chaos brought by the pandemic. The Moscow based company has recently expanded operations to India to bring best-in-class technology solutions and foster the digital infrastructure of the country. The company's co-founder, Mikhail Marchenko spoke to the StartupCity team about the rising prevalence of fraudulent activity online and its implications in the Indian context. He also tells us about JuicyScore's foray into the Indian market.
StartupCity: How has fraudulent activity pertaining to financial services evolved over the past few years globally? In your opinion what has led to this evolution and how significant is the damage caused by hackers over the last few years?
Mikhail: The past decade has seen a series of technological breakthroughs which opened many opportunities for the financial institutes and took it to new heights. However, today, all the financial institutions are witnessing such conditions, when more services become available online, combining with continuing economic uncertainty and a lack of controls all these trends lead to a fertile ground for online fraud. According to our data, organizations lose from 5 to 25 percent of their revenue to fraud each year. Total losses from online fraud in 2020 amounted to $ 32.4 billion, and experts predict that this figure will grow to $ 40.6 billion by 2027. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on it going online is one of the most significant factors. Fraud prevention as management of all other types of risk is an endless process of improvement and technological development. This allows financial institutions to invent additional tools for decision-making system efficiency improvement.
StartupCity: Walk us through some of the most commonplace techniques used by hackers to commit online fraud. In such a scenario, what can a common man do to protect oneself from such attacks and safeguard data?
Mikhail:There are over a thousand patterns of fraudulent behavior, we can name a few. Seasonal attacks bring a lot of troubles due to the growing percentage of the “black sheep”: it’s been several years that we register an increase in the number of fraudulent applications just before the public holidays along with the consumers’ need for shopping and, as a result, the need for additional credit means. In order to neutralize such seasonal attacks, we recommend taking a more prudent look on the risk policy. The “seasonal” fraud is usually not of a profound background and most of the risky applications can be easily cut off, saving the business from collateral damage. Another problem is fraudulent brute force attacks, which is launched from a big number of devices that have an individual IP each and some supporting data preventing them from being cut off by conventional security tools in one operation. How could we deal with such evil? The most efficient solution would be monitoring the risk level using fraud score detecting and blocking the most suspicious and active devices, analyzing application frequency from the IP address and subnet. Yet such a method implicates a constant control over the incoming flow by risk managers.
StartupCity:How has the rise of financial institutions such as Neobanks and Microfinance companies lead to an increase in the risk ratio for online lending in India?
Mikhail: The risk ratio for online lending in the country has increased multifold in the last few years. However, this is not just due to rise of financial institutions such as Neobanks and Microfinance companies, but also pertains to multiple factors such as macroeconomics, regulation rules, decrease in customer income, as well as the pandemic.
StartupCity: How big of a market opportunity do you foresee for fraud preventing tools in the Indian market? What will be some of the most significant driving forces behind the adoption of said tools?
Mikhail: India is a rather promising market for antifraud solutions since the Indian government is heavily investing in transitioning from branch-based banking to digital banking. Moreover, the pandemic fueled transition to digital lending in India's technologically mature and person-focused market also is a rather significant driving force speaking about the adoption of antifraud solutions. We believe that the future is behind those solutions that donot use borrowers’ personal data as well as their direct identifiers are not used for providing a score, gives a good ROI and adds significant Gini points to credit score models resolution power.
StartupCity:What are JuicyScore’s growth plans pertaining to the Indian market?
Mikhail: JuicyScore has entered the Indian market with an aim to provide best-in-class services by tailoring the product for the sub continent. We see a huge market potential in the country and to cater to the needs of the diverse set of customers, our focus is on boosting our workforce by hiring top professionals, initially in the business development and sales roles.
Digitization has been on an upswing in India over the past few years now. The country has not only been adding building support infrastructure for a further digitized country but has also been experiencing an influx of new users join the 'digiverse'. While this comes as great news for businesses and consumers a like, there has been one downside to this phenomenon, i.e. an increase in cybercrime. According to an industry report, the rate of digital fraud attempts originating from India against businesses went up by 28.3 percent when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
According to JuicyScore, a global provider of antifraud and risk management solution India is a highpriority market where opportunistic hackers are taking advantage of the chaos brought by the pandemic. The Moscow based company has recently expanded operations to India to bring best-in-class technology solutions and foster the digital infrastructure of the country. The company's co-founder, Mikhail Marchenko spoke to the StartupCity team about the rising prevalence of fraudulent activity online and its implications in the Indian context. He also tells us about JuicyScore's foray into the Indian market.
StartupCity: How has fraudulent activity pertaining to financial services evolved over the past few years globally? In your opinion what has led to this evolution and how significant is the damage caused by hackers over the last few years?
Mikhail: The past decade has seen a series of technological breakthroughs which opened many opportunities for the financial institutes and took it to new heights. However, today, all the financial institutions are witnessing such conditions, when more services become available online, combining with continuing economic uncertainty and a lack of controls all these trends lead to a fertile ground for online fraud. According to our data, organizations lose from 5 to 25 percent of their revenue to fraud each year. Total losses from online fraud in 2020 amounted to $ 32.4 billion, and experts predict that this figure will grow to $ 40.6 billion by 2027. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on it going online is one of the most significant factors. Fraud prevention as management of all other types of risk is an endless process of improvement and technological development. This allows financial institutions to invent additional tools for decision-making system efficiency improvement.
The “seasonal” fraud is usually not of a profound background and most of the risky applications can be easily cut off, saving the business from collateral damage
StartupCity: Walk us through some of the most commonplace techniques used by hackers to commit online fraud. In such a scenario, what can a common man do to protect oneself from such attacks and safeguard data?
Mikhail:There are over a thousand patterns of fraudulent behavior, we can name a few. Seasonal attacks bring a lot of troubles due to the growing percentage of the “black sheep”: it’s been several years that we register an increase in the number of fraudulent applications just before the public holidays along with the consumers’ need for shopping and, as a result, the need for additional credit means. In order to neutralize such seasonal attacks, we recommend taking a more prudent look on the risk policy. The “seasonal” fraud is usually not of a profound background and most of the risky applications can be easily cut off, saving the business from collateral damage. Another problem is fraudulent brute force attacks, which is launched from a big number of devices that have an individual IP each and some supporting data preventing them from being cut off by conventional security tools in one operation. How could we deal with such evil? The most efficient solution would be monitoring the risk level using fraud score detecting and blocking the most suspicious and active devices, analyzing application frequency from the IP address and subnet. Yet such a method implicates a constant control over the incoming flow by risk managers.
StartupCity:How has the rise of financial institutions such as Neobanks and Microfinance companies lead to an increase in the risk ratio for online lending in India?
Mikhail: The risk ratio for online lending in the country has increased multifold in the last few years. However, this is not just due to rise of financial institutions such as Neobanks and Microfinance companies, but also pertains to multiple factors such as macroeconomics, regulation rules, decrease in customer income, as well as the pandemic.
StartupCity: How big of a market opportunity do you foresee for fraud preventing tools in the Indian market? What will be some of the most significant driving forces behind the adoption of said tools?
Mikhail: India is a rather promising market for antifraud solutions since the Indian government is heavily investing in transitioning from branch-based banking to digital banking. Moreover, the pandemic fueled transition to digital lending in India's technologically mature and person-focused market also is a rather significant driving force speaking about the adoption of antifraud solutions. We believe that the future is behind those solutions that donot use borrowers’ personal data as well as their direct identifiers are not used for providing a score, gives a good ROI and adds significant Gini points to credit score models resolution power.
StartupCity:What are JuicyScore’s growth plans pertaining to the Indian market?
Mikhail: JuicyScore has entered the Indian market with an aim to provide best-in-class services by tailoring the product for the sub continent. We see a huge market potential in the country and to cater to the needs of the diverse set of customers, our focus is on boosting our workforce by hiring top professionals, initially in the business development and sales roles.
