Singapore businesses target fraud before accounts go live

Risk-based verification can help businesses catch suspicious identities earlier without adding unnecessary friction and cost across every digital customer journey.

Singapore businesses are shifting fraud prevention closer to account creation as stolen identities, synthetic identities and deepfakes increase the need to identify suspicious users before accounts become operational.

Raja Hassan, Vice President of Product Development at Shufti, said tougher penalties for mule-account activity could help deter fraud, but enforcement alone would not prevent fraudulent accounts from being created.

The bigger operational priority is detecting suspicious identities during onboarding, before accounts can be used to move victims’ money.

“If somebody is opening an account and using a stolen identity or a synthetic identity, or maybe a deepfake, we want to catch that at onboarding,” Hassan said.

For businesses, stronger fraud prevention does not necessarily mean imposing additional verification on every customer. Hassan said companies can assess identity documents, devices, whether an applicant is genuinely present and unusual activity in the background.

Additional checks can then be triggered when those indicators suggest greater risk, allowing legitimate customers to proceed without unnecessary steps.

“As the risk gets higher, the scrutiny gets higher,” Hassan said.

Such an approach could help businesses manage the commercial trade-off between stronger fraud controls and maintaining fast digital onboarding.

Rather than increasing verification requirements across the entire customer base, companies can concentrate additional friction and resources on higher-risk cases.

Early intervention can also reduce the cost of responding to fraud. Hassan said stopping a fraudulent account before activation is cheaper than dealing with fraud after the account has been used.

For businesses expanding digital customer journeys, fraud prevention is therefore becoming an onboarding design issue: determining which checks can operate in the background and when additional scrutiny should be triggered.