Global Survey: Nearly 50% of Financial Services Executives Struggle with Credit Risk and Fraud Prevention

A global survey has found that almost half of financial services leaders continue to grapple with the challenges of managing credit risk and preventing fraud. The results highlight a pressing need for modernization within the industry, particularly as artificial intelligence becomes more integral in 2025 and beyond.

The survey, commissioned by Provenir—a global leader in AI-powered decisioning solutions—gathered responses from nearly 200 senior decision-makers at financial institutions worldwide. It examined how organizations are addressing risk decisioning and fraud mitigation, their primary investment priorities, and the expanding role of AI throughout the customer lifecycle.

Key findings from the survey include:

• AI and Investment Priorities: Over half of those surveyed plan to invest in risk decisioning and AI/embedded intelligence solutions within the next year. Nonetheless, nearly 60% report difficulties in deploying and maintaining effective risk models.
• AI’s Strategic Value: 55% of executives recognize AI’s value in streamlining strategic decisions and enhancing performance through intelligent recommendations. Additionally, 53% noted AI’s capability to automatically refine models, thereby improving accuracy and decision quality.
• Top Business Objectives: The leading goals for customer and account management teams are real-time, event-driven decisioning (65%), reducing friction across the customer lifecycle (44%), and boosting customer lifetime value (44%).
• Data Integration Challenges: More than half of respondents cited challenges with integrating data sources into their decisioning processes. The use of multiple decisioning systems throughout the customer lifecycle is also creating friction—59% reported issues with data flow and unified insights, while 52% pointed to operational inefficiencies. Furthermore, 28% observed a negative impact on the consistency of customer experiences.
• Fraud Prevention Gaps: 37% struggle to orchestrate data effectively for application fraud prevention, especially when incorporating new data sources. Meanwhile, 36% face challenges in leveraging AI and machine learning for fraud detection. Nearly one-third believe that breaking down data silos between fraud and credit risk teams is crucial for a truly integrated fraud prevention strategy.

“Financial institutions are keenly aware of today’s increasingly complex threat landscape and must adopt new approaches for improved risk decisioning and fraud prevention across the customer lifecycle while providing frictionless and personalized customer experiences,” said Carol Hamilton, Chief Product Officer at Provenir. “With an AI decisioning platform more closely aligning credit and fraud risk teams, financial services executives can ensure holistic, end-to-end decisioning with a complete view of customers across the entire lifecycle.”

The survey was conducted between November and December 2024, collecting insights from financial professionals in North America, EMEA, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. Participants held manager-level or higher positions, including director, vice president, and executive roles.

About Provenir

Provenir helps banks, fintechs, and financial services providers unlock the secret to smarter risk decisioning.

Provenir’s AI Decisioning Platform brings together the power of decisioning, data, and decision intelligence to drive smarter decisions. This unique offering gives organizations the ability to power decisioning innovation across the full customer lifecycle, driving improvements in the customer experience, best-in-class fraud prevention, access to financial services, business agility, and more.