Frankfurt, June 6, 2019

As last year, CRIF organized the Expert Forum "Innovations in Credit & Fraud" on June 6, 2019 in the DACH region. This year's event was held under the banner "INNOVATION. TRANSFORMATION. VALUE CREATION."

Nearly 90 experts from the financial and banking sector came to the Design Offices in Frankfurt to find out about news and trends from the financial sector in lectures and panel discussions. During the breaks and while drinking cocktails on the roof terrace at the end of the day, participants also had time for one of the most important parts of such an event: Networking. And those who listened carefully to the conversations could always hear the same words: Digitization, PSD2, OCR, digital onboarding and, above all, fraud prevention.

After the welcome by the hosts Christian Bock (Managing Director of CRIF Bürgel GmbH) and Natalia Shchelovanova (Regional Director, Decisioning, Business Development and Consulting, CRIF GmbH), the moderator Stephan Glismann-Bringmann took the reins and warmed up the attendees with an introductory Pecha Kucha presentation.

The Expert Forum was divided into three topics: INNOVATION, TRANSFORMATION and VALUE CREATION. The first lecture was given by industry expert Peter Rosemann. He impressively demonstrated the connection between real-time payments on the one hand and fraud on the other. Rosemann also spoke about the ECB's new "Target Instant Payment Settlement" (TIPS) service. Ludolf Ebner followed. The CEO of Bankenscore explained credit-rating-based corporate financing in the age of PSD2. Ebner explained how Bankenscore reverses the credit process in an open digital credit rating platform. The companies' own queries are regarded as the starting point for available loans.

In an interactive presentation, Dr. Manuel Zollikofer (CRIF AG) and Marc Hallauer (Comparis AG) demonstrated the advantages of a self-assessment portal for consumers. Cooperation between CRIF and Comparis provides Swiss consumers with the transparency they urgently need on credit scoring. The lunch break was used by all those present for extensive networking.

Afterwards, came the first English-language presentation. Luca Agnesi (BMW Bank) and Simone Capecchi (Executive Director, CRIF SpA) demonstrated the successful cooperation between BMW Bank and CRIF in Italy. The CRIF approach ranges from digital advertising and OCR technology to an Open Banking platform.

Afterwards Dr. Sebastian Schnelle (CRIF Bürgel GmbH) and Massimiliano Minei (CRIF SpA) looked at new ways of prospecting and presented use cases from Germany and Italy.

This was followed by a lively panel discussion "Fraud makes you smart - are fraudsters smarter?" with Erik Manke, Prof. Del Re, Bastian Steinbach (CRIF Bürgel GmbH) and presenter Stephan Glismann-Bringmann. The opinion on whether fraudsters are actually smarter was not unanimous.

After another short break, the third block - VALUE CREATION - started.

Markus Brinkmann (BDO Germany) explained the importance of identifying compliance risks in corporate transactions through compliance due diligence, and gave interesting practical examples.

In the penultimate presentation, Prof. Del Re showed how to check documents for authenticity and thus protect against fraud. The Managing Director of VeriTrust illustrated standard checks using payroll accounting as an example. Last but not least, Erik Manke took the stage. The criminal investigator gave a lively presentation of cases of account opening fraud that he has personally experienced.

After a wrap-up by moderator Glismann-Bringmann, the participants of the expert forum enjoyed cocktails and nibbles on the roof terrace of the Design Offices and talked, networked or simply enjoyed the view over the Frankfurt skyline.