Hanley Economic Building Society is the latest Mutual to join 97 other financial institutions in the National SIRA fraud prevention consortium

National SIRA is the largest syndicated database of cross sector customer risk intelligence in the UK. It has over 160 members contributing more than 300 million records and has thus far helped to save its contributors over £3 billion in losses to fraud.

In addition to implementing the SIRA platform, Hanley Economic Building Society, which was founded in 1854, has also appointed Synectics Solutions to conduct some ‘back-book’ screening. This will enhance its know-your-customer (KYC) compliance processes, using intelligence from Dow Jones, accessed via Synectics Data Marketplace.

The SIRA consortium has grown substantially in the past 12 months as financial product providers increasingly realise the importance of collaboration and intelligence sharing to combat escalating and increasingly sophisticated fraud threats.

Lynsey Carter, Head of Operations, at Hanley Economic Building Society, said:“We pride ourselves on delivering superior customer service which builds trusted relationships and lifelong loyalty from our customers. This means we need to work with industry-leading initiatives such as Synectics’ SIRA in order to protect our members from the unfortunate but real threat of fraud and financial crime.”

Both Hanley Economic Building Society and Synectics Solutions are members of Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce, which facilitated the relationship and supports the engagement between the two business on an ongoing basis.

Murray Raw, Head of Business Development at Synectics Solutions, added: “Fraudsters are always looking to prey on more vulnerable finance providers who don’t have the level of defence that some of the bigger retail banks have in place. This doesn’t have to be the case. As we welcome Hanley Economic into the SIRA community, they will be able to take advantage of accessing the UK’s largest fraud intelligence resource when screening their applications.

“UK mutuals recognise the value of collaboration and this provides a cost-effective level of access to the National SIRA fraud database. The acquisition of Hanley Economic into the SIRA community continues that trend joining a total of eight mutuals across the UK.”

Further information

www.thehanley.co.uk