TD Bank Survey: Fraud Top of Mind, But Financial Institutions Lack Training

The risk of payments fraud and cybersecurity was the top concern of financial professionals in a recent TD Bank survey with 44% of those that responded calling it their top operational concern. Also, 37% said the ability to adapt to processing faster electronic payments is an obstacle.  This was a 14 percent increase from the year before. 

Notably, the industry seems to be quite positive on Blockchain/Distributed ledger technology with 90% thinking it will have a notable impact on the payments industry.  About 29% of industry professionals noted that its ability to create stronger audit trails will help the industry, as will reducing payment fraud (18%) and improving cross-border payments processing (21%) 

“Blockchain technology has broad implications for the commercial payments space, from speeding up settlements to securing cross-border transactions,” said Rick Burke, Head of Corporate Products and Services at TD Bank. “Even though much of the industry has a baseline understanding that blockchain can evolve and improve payments, the varied responses indicate that the technology's specific capabilities and implications are still a great unknown for many finance professionals.”

The survey also found that companies are investing in training strategies for several functions surrounding treasury operations. Survey respondents said their organization has training strategies specifically for data and analytics (45 percent), AI and automation (26 percent) and blockchain (14 percent).  

As noted almost weekly by Banking Exchange, investment in tech training is crucial to Bank growth, survival and security. More than half of the respondents said financial institutions can help them better protect against fraud and cybercrime through education. Unfortunately, only about half of the respondents said their company has any in-house cyber fraud prevention training.

“As global fraud and cybersecurity incidents continue to rise, corporations recognize the need to bolster their protective measures and improve employee understanding of how to safeguard finances,” said Burke. “To achieve real success, organizations and their employees need to be better able to identify and deter fraud attempts. This should be a responsibility shared by businesses and their financial institutions, beginning with better education."

With bank employess and other financial executives recognizing the need for training and stronger measures against fraud, the industry needs to respond faster and with more in depth training.