The Fight Against Voice Fraud: Maximising Margins with Global Numbering Intelligence

A Tier 1 global voice carrier selected XConnect to help it combat voice fraud across its international wholesale network and prevent the margin erosion that it was causing. In a challenging market, the carrier was looking for a way to quickly increase the effectiveness of its fraud management systems and ensure it was maximising the value of every minute on its network.

While fraud losses had always had an impact on the carrier’s bottom line, declining roaming revenues and minutes volumes meant that it had to find an immediate way to improve its fight against voice fraud. It evaluated multiple solutions but discovered that global numbering intelligence provided one of the simplest and most cost-efficient ways to expand its capabilities without needing to invest in new technologies, integrations or skills.

By working with XConnect, the carrier was able to use global number intelligence to enhance its anti-fraud systems and see rapid return on investment. It found that 45% of identified International Revenue Share Fraud (IRSF) was a result of terminating calls to unallocated numbers and that blocking of such traffic could be achieved without the problem of false positives.

The Challenge

The carrier was seeing a high occurrence of IRSF across its network. IRSF is committed by pumping voice traffic to international destinations where the destination number provider shares the termination revenue with the traffic originator. According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA), IRSF is ranked number one across the various types of telecoms fraud worldwide. It estimates IRSF accounts for more than $5 billion in losses to telecoms operators globally.

The challenge was to decrease losses from IRSF without adding to the complexity and cost of buying and integrating another anti-fraud solution. The carrier had strict budget, resource, and time constraints that meant it needed a way to enhance its existing approach to fraud and not reinvent it. Its existing fraud management systems were identifying some suspicious traffic and enabled them to create block lists, but were also delivering false positives when analysing voice traffic.

IRSF was having an immediate impact on the carrier’s bottom line, while also causing losses for its carrier partners. It recognised an opportunity to contribute to the overall health of the voice carrier ecosystem and support the delivery of legitimate traffic across its network as well as its partners. In addition to increasing its own margins, the carrier wanted to take action to support the carrier community and deny profits to organised crime.

While it had its own data sets for IPRN and other high risk ranges, there was an opportunity to expand both the granularity and accuracy of global range allocations. Rather than investing in new systems, the carrier could increase the precision and performance of its fraud management systems.

Solution

The carrier came to XConnect looking for advice on how to improve its data rather than ‘rip and replace’ its Fraud Management Systems. The team at XConnect was able to understand its IRSF challenges and find the simplest and most cost-efficient path forward.

It helped the carrier to evaluate the size of its IRSF problem by analysing its voice traffic. The evaluation was consistent with analysis of other voice carrier traffic where 40 to 50% of identified IRSF was terminating toward unallocated ranges. Through this, the carrier was able to understand its potential savings. Together with XConnect, it built a business case for expanding its global number range data.

Most IRSF is committed using unallocated number ranges, international premium rate numbers (IPRN), premium rate numbers (PRN), leased ranges, and non-standard ranges.

XConnect’s global number range data was combined with the carrier’s existing data sets, as well as new global number range intelligence to identify this high-risk traffic.

By focusing on the phone number and analysing to the last 2, 3 and 4 digits, the carrier was able to block suspicious traffic and reduce false positives before they could impact its business. It consumed the data through a simple data download that was then shared across the carrier’s existing systems.

The result was growing margins across its international operations thanks to traffic being routed with increased precision, performance and trust. It was able to serve new business with confidence and capture new growth while expanding its anti-fraud capabilities with new data sets.

“By enhancing the data carriers use in the fight against fraud, they can quickly and efficiently improve margins and reduce risk. It is about empowering their fraud management systems and processes with new intelligence and enabling them to identify suspicious traffic, while reducing false positives. Global numbering intelligence delivers a fast and efficient way to boost margins and ensure that carriers are maximising the value of every minute on their network.”

Eli Katz, Founder and CEO, XConnect

Benefits

A Comprehensive Approach

XConnect delivered a simple and powerful solution for combating IRSF and supported the carrier’s holistic approach to fighting fraud

Predictable Margins

The carrier was able to carry traffic with confidence and benefit from predictable margins when serving new business demands

New Visibility

XConnect was able to give the carrier visibility into its fraud losses and provide a business case for taking action

Greater Control

The carrier was able to gain control over its traffic with global numbering intelligence, to optimise routing and stop OBR losses, in addition to fraud mitigation

Expert Support

XConnect supported the carrier every step of the way from assessing losses through to building a business case and implementation

A Simple Activation

XConnect made it easy for the carrier to expand its data sets with a simple data download that it could use across its internal systems, and no need to invest in new systems

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