Vault.Bank: A Case Study in Digital Experience Innovation
Brodhead, Wis.-based Vault.Bank, a three-year-old digital community bank, wanted to grow its customer base by increasing account opening conversions, while maintaining a strong fraud mitigation posture. To support that goal, bank leaders turned to ICBA’s ThinkTECH Accelerator to identify a fraud prevention partner.
Problem
Brodhead, Wis.-based Vault.Bank, a three-year-old digital community bank, wanted to grow its customer base by increasing account opening conversions, while maintaining a strong fraud mitigation posture. To support that goal, bank leaders turned to ICBA’s ThinkTECH Accelerator to identify a fraud prevention partner.
Enter ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator Alumni, Sardine, an AI-driven risk platform helping banks, fintechs, and retailers prevent fraud, detect money laundering, and improve credit decisioning.
"Knowing that Sardine was a part of the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator made it an easy choice to move forward with them - and we have seen the results.
We can confidently say that Sardine has played a critical role in significantly reducing account-opening fraud exposure. While no system can claim zero risk in absolute terms, our current posture is the strongest it has been, and we've seen no material fraud losses tied to account opening since implementation."
-Omar Hamdan, Chief Experience Officer
Process
After choosing Sardine, Vault.Bank focused on integrating and configuring the platform to ensure alignment across systems. Working with Sardine and its core provider, the team optimized the setup to meet both risk and operational requirements, incorporating a third party to simplify processes*.
Today, the bank holds regular meetings with the Sardine team to review trends, fine-tune rules, and adjust thresholds based on real data. This has helped the bank to stay ahead of evolving fraud patterns and quickly test and deploy changes without disrupting the customer experience.
ICBA Innovation Impact
Smarter Approval Rate
With Sardine, Vault.Bank is approving more of the right customers without increasing risk exposure.
Near Real-Time Decisioning
Automated a previously manual process to enable near real-time decisions, enhancing the customer experience and boosting conversion.
Zero Material Fraud Losses
Tied to account opening since implementing Sardine.
Case in point: When fraudsters came to the Vault.Bank platform and were employing a host of different email addresses to bypass blocks, Omar Hamdan, chief experience officer, notified the Sardine team. Upon deeper review, they tailored their system to block specific attributes within the individual record to expand targeted blocks when a new account attempt hits specific criteria.
The Sardine team also taps into a network of data that supports a more comprehensive fraud screening.
“Sardine equips institutions of all sizes with the same access to behavioral intelligence, consortium data, and real-time decisioning, empowering community banks with the same solutions as top 20 banks,” said Gianna Lussier, strategic account manager, Sardine.
* To streamline operations, Vault.Bank also worked with ICBA Corporate Members Fiserv and Linker Finance.
Performance
Before partnering with Sardine, Vault.Bank lacked real-time decisioning needed to keep pace with synthetic identities, velocity attacks, and coordinated fraud across onboarding and payments. With Sardine in place, Vault.Bank achieved the following improvements:
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Identification and blockage of a significant percentage of high-risk applications—well into the double-digit percentage range.
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Improved onboarding approval rates, with continued strong risk controls.
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Reduced manual review workload and faster decisioning at account opening.
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Increased confidence in scaling into new markets without increasing fraud exposure.
“The Sardine team is responsive, proactive, and willing to get into the details with us. They’ve taken the time to understand how we operate and what we’re trying to build, which makes a big difference. It doesn’t feel like a one-size-fits-all solution; it feels tailored to our growth strategy,” said Hamdan.
Learn more about the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator and other ICBA Innovation programming at icba.org/innovation.