Docuverus

View Original

Solving Applicant Fraud with Innovation: The Case for Relying on a Partner That Built Their Own Technology vs. a Reseller

We Start with Passion

Let’s talk about passion. Passion to be the best. Passion to be the best in fraud detection. Passion to build the best, most accurate, highest quality fraud detection system. Passion to cultivate the best fraud prevention services in the industry, backed by the best team in the industry. Passion to provide the best support to our clients, whatever their needs. Passion drives what we do and we don’t stop, ever!

When I look for a partner, I look for that passion because I know, regardless of our challenge, that the partner will eagerly take it on.

So what does that say about a partner that farms out their core competency to a third party? It tells me they don’t really care about the problem they are being engaged to solve. It tells me that perhaps their passion is in making sales, not in solving the core challenge. It tells me that I can’t trust their judgment because they don’t have the in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience that can only be obtained by building it yourself.

Using partners isn’t a bad thing. Heck, we do it, too. But not for our core competencies of fraud detection and income verification. We use partners for things like sending text messages for multi-factor authentication, for accepting electronic payments, and for helping us achieve SOC 2 compliance. We even pay a partner to attack our systems to ensure they are as secure as possible. These are things that we don’t need to be experts in. In fact, we don’t want to be experts in these areas because that would distract us from our core mission.

Other companies have approached us, wanting us to use their fraud detection services. These are the same suppliers that many of our competitors rely upon. Typically, these companies fall into one of two categories.

The big company with lots of services

For these large companies, their core value is to be a one-stop shop for anything their clients need. But their individual services are anemic, following an 80/20 rule. They get most of it right. It may be good enough for some, but not for us.

An AI company

These tend to be smaller, boutique companies that are experts in using their own model or one of the big AI models. Yes, yet another partner in the partner chain!

They are passionate about AI. I’m sure they may even be good at it, but that’s not the only way to detect fraud and arguably, not the best way. We use multiple techniques where AI/ML is only one component. But if you partner with an AI company for your total fraud detection solution, that’s what you are going to get – a partial solution to to a complex problem.

And what about our clients? They are looking for a partner in fraud prevention so they don’t have to be the experts. After all, their passion and core competencies are in multi-family housing. Why would they want a fraud prevention partner who also isn’t an expert in fraud prevention?

Maybe you think to yourself that good is good enough.  But good doesn’t cut it with us, and frankly, we don’t think it should be good enough for you.  Why?  Because just one mistake can leave you holding the bag for a bad debt case worth tens of thousands of dollars. 

What to look for

So how do you know? Fraud detection companies most likely aren’t going to tell you outright if they are using a third-party solution. So you have to dig to see where the knowledge lies. Can they give you a good understanding of how they do their analysis? Or do they just give you general nonsense like, “Hey, we use AI and we’ve analyzed lots of documents so we must be good.” Trust us, that kind of simplistic jargon shows how little they understand their own product.

At Docuverus, we are excited to talk about our fraud analysis and ID and income verification algorithms with clients and potential clients. Of course, there’s some secret sauce we can’t reveal lest our competitors learn of it. We are tireless in our efforts to mature our multidimensional metadata analysis and document reading logic. We can tell you the strengths and weaknesses of each and how we are working to improve them because we built them!