Banco Santander, BBVA & CaixaBank join forces to fight financial fraud

By Gloria Methri

Banco Santander, BBVA, and CaixaBank have joined forces to tackle financial scams, one of the biggest challenges in banking. The banks are working on tools to exchange important information and data that will help prevent financial crime.

They have created FrauDfense, a company that will bring together anti-fraud initiatives from the banks. FrauDfense has been presented to the appropriate supervisory and regulatory authorities. The alliance will first develop a tool to share information on fraudulent practices and effective response measures. The tool will keep information private and secure.

The alliance will fight fraud, which can take many sophisticated forms, such as new account fraud (where customers’ identities are stolen to buy products), online fraud, and card payments.

FrauDfense, an ambitious link-up that will start in Spain, is far from a closed book. After the initial phase, the alliance will consider adding other banks and companies to increase its scope. Banks and companies from other industries interested in exchanging information on fraud to protect customers, entities, and broader society will also be able to join.

Carlos Requena will be appointed CEO of FrauDfense, and the board of directors will comprise two representatives from each bank. These include Carles Solé Pascual, chief information security officer (CISO) of Santander España; Daniel Barriuso, group chief transformation officer of Banco Santander; Natalia Ortega, global head of Financial Crime Prevention of BBVA; Sergio Fidalgo, group chief security officer of BBVA; Sofia Karapatsiou, director of Governance and Fraud Control, CaixaBank, and Lorenzo Malo, CISO of CaixaBank.

BBVA’s Natalia Ortega will be FrauDfense’s first chair, a role that will rotate every two years between the three member banks.