ACI Worldwide (Nasdaq: ACIW), leading international provider of electronic payments software and solutions, today announced the implementation of ACI Proactive Risk Manager for Enterprise Risk solution on IBM System z at Westpac New Zealand, one of the country's largest full service banks.
Westpac New Zealand chose the ACI solution to strengthen its fraud detection and prevention capabilities, to protect against the rapidly rising volume of fraudulent activities occurring worldwide. The bank required a cost-effective, reliable and comprehensive solution, in order to offer the greatest protection to its customers.
Terry Mortensen, Head of Fraud & Security at Westpac New Zealand said, "Within a few days of implementing ACI's Proactive Risk Manager, it alerted us to fraud, which we were then able to prevent. Immediately, we were confident in assuring our customers, and prospective customers, that we can provide them the risk-free service they need in the current financial climate."
"Fraudulent transactions are damaging many companies in the financial services industry today, and there is pressure not only from banking customers, but also the government, to control them." said Ron Totaro, chief operating officer at ACI Worldwide. "Innovative financial institutions, like Westpac New Zealand, are deploying Proactive Risk Manager to detect fraud early in the transaction cycle, to prevent financial loss and negative brand impact."
"Effective enterprise-wide fraud management is not easy to achieve. It not only requires significant processing power and scalability to handle the data volume and throughput, but also sophisticated functionality to enable accurate fraud detection," explained June Felix, General Manager for Banking and Financial Markets at IBM. "Proactive Risk Manager on IBM System z servers can help provide Westpac New Zealand with the capability to take a holistic, enterprise-wide approach to managing financial crimes and operational risk."
Westpac New Zealand implemented real-time rules to monitor potentially suspicious transactions within the authorization process, therefore identifying and preventing fraud. The configurable rules scoring engine gives the bank the agility to respond to changing fraud patterrns.
Westpac New Zealand has utilized ACI's BASE24® for its payment processing for 20 years, handling an average of 1.6 million transactions per day. With the integrated combination of BASE24 and Proactive Risk Manager, the bank can provide a service that is faster, safer, more cost effective and reliable.