86-Year-Old Credit Union Cuts Authentication Time in Half in First 90 Days of Pindrop Implementation
Using Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport, Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, an 86 year old organization with 7.7B in assets, and a Five9 customer, reduced average Member Authentication Time by 50% (from 90 seconds to 45 seconds) in 90 days. Pindrop® solutions streamlined the call handling process, enabling agents to quickly authenticate callers, reducing the time spent on each call and providing a superior fraud case investigation system that helped improve case management efficiency.
Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU), a forward thinking, member-first and technology oriented organization, wanted to modernize their member authentication process as part of a broader organizational transformation to focus on member experience. Additionally, they wanted to stay ahead of the fraud trends by adopting an industry-leading fraud and deepfake detection solution. Our Pindrop® Passport solution helped MSUFCU improve customer satisfaction and NPS scores, as well as improve agent productivity by reducing member authentication time by +50% (from an average of 90 seconds to 45 seconds in the first three months of implementation). For +40% of the calls with a full profile match of callers, MSUFCU was able to reduce authentication time by 78 seconds, down to an efficient 12 seconds. Pindrop® Protect provided MSUFCU an efficient way to manage fraud alerts, and to increase case management efficiency by providing data and insights on fraud cases.
About the Credit Union
MSUFCU was established in 1937 to provide a safe place where members could borrow and save money. For the past 86 years, MSUFCU has built strong relationships with its members. The credit union serves important life goals of its members, such as helping them purchase their first car, home, or saving for their children’s education.
As a member-owned and governed financial cooperative with $7.7B in assets, +360k members, and 1,300 employees across 32 locations, MSUFCU is driven to provide superior experience and financial security to its members. They recently undertook a digital transformation initiative to convert their member service technology stack -including the phone channel- to the Cloud to better serve their members. MSUFCU reached out to Pindrop for help with modernizing their member identity verification process as part of transformation, and to help ensure safety of their members from the rising threat of external fraud.
Challenges
Member Experience
As MSUFCU was in the early stages of their implementation with Five9, they quickly identified member experience as an opportunity for improvement. Members, as well as employees, felt that there was an opportunity to make the authentication process run more smoothly. For example, Members felt that they were being asked too many questions to prove their identity, while the employees (agents) felt that this high friction process adversely impacted their relationship with Members, making it difficult to offer them new products and services. Beyond this friction, contact center employees felt that they were being asked to identify red flags and risks in those member interactions – a task for which they were not fully equipped.
Proactive Fraud Detection
The credit union also identified contact center fraud detection as an area where they needed new and better technology to strengthen their organization’s overall security posture. Contact centers are under threat from potential fraudsters with + 60% increase in fraud attacks between 2021-23. Credit Unions in particular have seen a sharper increase in fraud with +71% increase during the same period. MSUFCU was aware of these threats, and wanted to enhance protection for their contact centers. Account reconnaissance was also an area of concern. The MSUFCU fraud team wanted to increase their fraud detection and case investigation efficiency to deal with fraud alerts more efficiently. Lastly, the credit union wanted to empower call center agents with automated processes, including tools and technology to identify at-risk interactions without impacting their ability to serve trusted members.
Goals
MSUFCU had three goals as they sought a new solution:
- Improve member experience via frictionless, real-time authentication
- Reduce voice and cross-channel fraud without adding friction to member experience and burdening employees with additional work
- Reduce voice and cross-channel fraud without adding friction to member experience and burdening employees with additional work
With these goals in mind, MSUFCU wanted to prepare for a state of fraud detection and member authentication that helped them evolve for the future; proactively detecting and mitigating fraud activity vs reacting to events on a passive, case-by-case basis, and ensuring that their fraud defense was ready for future threats like deepfakes. They also sought a solution that enabled expanded self service options for members in the future.
Before Pindrop® Solutions
MSUFCU started modernizing their technology infrastructure by migrating to the Five9 Cloud Contact Center. As part of this migration, an important question was how to modernize the member authentication experience alongside this transformation.
In the current process, agents verified members by asking common security questions like the members’ name or account number, or asked them to repeat security phrases. The agents also had the flexibility to ask members about recent transactions or “out of wallet” questions, which are questions outside of the usual identification points like account numbers or SSNs that are meant to be known only to the intended users. However, agents struggled to ask good questions that gave confidence in the member’s identity, and the members themselves were unhappy about being asked so many questions. The current authentication process was not only hurting member satisfaction, but also affecting agent productivity. With a declining tenure of the average call center staff, there was a growing cost to train new staff. Every additional minute spent by the agents on the phone due to longer authentication time was further adding to this cost.
Call Duration Increased by 40%
The total average call duration at the credit union had increased to 8:30 minutes,up from 6 minutes four years ago. Of that, 90 seconds was typically spent on member authentication. The lack of visibility in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) was also costing MSUFCU the opportunity to increase self-service and reduce agent handled calls.
Fraud Risk Continued to Grow
Despite increasing handle times, the security team was concerned about the growing risk of fraud, both in the contact center and at the organizational level. For example, MSUFCU teams had observed instances of fraudsters performing reconnaissance in the self-service channels, like asking general questions about the credit union’s processes. The team found that fraudsters had gathered considerable information about the fraud department team, as well as how the credit union functioned.
Deepfakes were also top of mind for MSUFCU as they prepared for a future, ‘fraud-ready’ state. According to Pindrop customer data , +200k synthetic calls out of 21M agent handled calls analyzed were found in just 30 days of tracking, which demonstrated a growing problem. Not to mention, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence and advanced text-to-speech systems, synthetic audio has become more realistic, cost effective, and scalable1.
Such a high level of synthetic call activity poses a significant risk of fraud to contact centers and teams. MSUFCU wanted a solution at the forefront of combatting the threat of deepfakes.
Why Pindrop
Pindrop is leading the charge on deepfake fraud
MSUFCU chose Pindrop because of its single platform for both fraud detection and authentication, as well as its leadership in deepfake detection. “Pindrop just seemed to be more forward-thinking than the other vendors we looked at. For example, their work surrounding deepfakes was considerable, and it seemed like they were leading the charge more so than the competition”. – Colleen Pitmon, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU
Passive, Multi-Factor Authentication
Another factor that helped seal the deal for MSUFCU was Pindrop’s passive, multi-factor authentication solution, Passport. During their cloud transformation, MSUFCU wanted to adopt and leverage voice analysis to improve their authentication process without having to require their members to enroll or authenticate by saying “my voice is my password.” After evaluating other vendors, MSUFCU chose Pindrop for its frictionless, passive authentication system, which aligned to their forward-looking fraud strategy.
The credit union also found Pindrop’s seamless implementation, advisory, and project management expertise to be a strong differentiator. For example, MSUFCU wanted a partner who could fit into their agent desktop user interface (UI) experience, and Pindrop’s agent desktop integration with the credit union’s cloud provider was exactly what they were looking for. According to the MSUFCU, Pindrop was incredibly knowledgeable in shaping and building the workflows they needed. “We really appreciated the knowledge, expertise and guidance that the [Pindrop] team brought to every interaction. Their team was phenomenal in meeting every deadline.” – Colleen Pitmon, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU
The Right Partner to Help Reduce Expensive, Manual Authentication
MSUFCU found Pindrop to be the right partner to help with the evolution of their member authentication processes. After streamlining the agent-led authentication process, the credit union plans to encourage members to utilize more self-service options through their Five9 IVA. MSUFCU sees a lot of potential in conversational AI technologies to drive an increase in member self-service, and they plan to use Pindrop authentication to confidently service more transactions in the IVA.
Why did the credit union go with Pindrop?
- Technology and industry leadership in deepfake detection solutions
- Passive, frictionless authentication technology
- Strong operational, project management and industry expertise
What ROA did Pindrop® Solutions deliver?
“On the very first day, one of our agents shared that the calls ‘felt so much better.”
– Colleen Pitmon, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU
Since deploying Pindrop’s fully integrated authentication and fraud detection solution, the credit union has significantly reduced the average handle time, provided a better platform for fraud call handling and investigation and helped improve the member experience and satisfaction scores.
Launched in August, 2024
After deploying Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport, MSUFCU experienced significant benefits in member authentication, service satisfaction and fraud detection. MSUFCU’s members are no longer required to answer lengthy questions. Pindrop solutions reduced the average member authentication time by 50%, from 90 seconds to 45 seconds. For 40% of the calls that had a full profile match of the callers, Pindrop helped reduce authentication time from 90 seconds to 12 seconds (an 86.67% reduction). Even without a profile match, MSUFCU was able to reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) by 38 seconds using risk based authentication from Pindrop. This reduction helped contribute to a surge in member satisfaction, Net Promoter Scores and Effort (How easy members find it to accomplish what they need) scores. The overall satisfaction rating grew from 4.47 to 4.56 (from August 2024 to September 2024, two months after implementing the Pindrop solution), the NPS rose from 55 to 63 during the same period and the effort score grew from 4.13 to 4.26. These scores have been sustained in the following months also with NPS reaching to 65. The improved authentication has not only helped MSUFCU improve member satisfaction, but has also contributed to reducing an estimated $561,600 in annualized operational costs by lowering average call handle time.
Additionally, the credit union’s agent experience improved. By leveraging low-risk signals from Pindrop solutions, the credit union was able to remove 20 seconds in average handle time from the authentication process within 4 hours of going live, which helped open up time for agents to focus on their core activity of helping members. “An agent said on the very first day that the calls felt so much better and then that helped them to offer more products and services to members, which is a huge thing, both for what our members need and for the organization”. – Collen Pitmon, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU
Since the deployment of Pindrop Protect, the credit union has experienced improved visibility in fraud activity, and a superior workflow in managing their fraud investigations. With the help of Protect, MSUFCU discovered the fraud rate in their contact center was 1 in 1,900 calls (vs industry average of 1 in 976 calls). Previously the credit union received fraud alerts from the call center, but they had limited access to data to understand the nuances of the fraud, which hindered their investigation efficiency. The Pindrop fraud detection platform provided a great user experience -with configuration flexibility and drop down menus – for the fraud investigation team to manage cases and navigate a fraud call. “The data is all right there. Overall, the biggest win for us is just the efficiency gains in terms of navigating our investigations.” – Jamie Smathers, VP of Fraud Prevention, MSUFCU
With the deployment of Pindrop Passport, MSUFCU authenticated 49,907 calls in October, 2024, of which 19,129 calls were authenticated with a full profile match rate of 88.41% and 30,778 calls were authenticated with Low Risk Policies, for an overall authentication rate of 92.99%. Within just a one week period, Pindrop Protect alerted MSUFCU on inbound fraud calls, protecting accounts with over $500k in total funds at risk.
Sources Cited
1. https://www.pindrop.com/blog/Introducing-Pindrop-Pulse-Inspect
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