The FinTech Report Podcast: Episode 53: Melanie Hayden, Managing Director, Truyu
In the latest episode of The FinTech Report Podcast, Glen Frost interviews Melanie Hayden, Managing Director of Truyu.
www.fintechsummit.com.au/the-fintech-report-podcast/
Consumers are targeted with investment scams, dating scams and false billing scams, leaving them embarrassed and often financially compromised.
How can financial services firms combat scams and Identity Theft?
From giving consumers an easy way to protect their credit reports to creating a secure digital identity, this podcast explores how technology is helping financial services.
Problem and solution
We know fraud and scams are a significant problem in Australia with estimates placing this at about $3 billion each year (ACCC Targeting Scams report, April 2023. Not adjusted for under-reporting). Drilling down further, identity fraud is a big and growing problem in Australia, with 25% year-on-year growth over the last year and 199,000 individual cases based on ABS data (FY22 / 23).
Truyu is a new app launched in early May 2024, available on a free trial in the Apple and Google app stores. It is an Australian first solution, built inside x15ventures, that alerts you in real time when your identity is used, either by you or by someone else. To bring this to life, if you sign up for a new phone plan at a telco, you will get an alert from Truyu. In this scenario there’s hopefully nothing to worry about – the alert simply provides reassurance the product is working. However, if you’re sat at home on the couch and get a Truyu alert that someone is using your identity to attempt to open a bank account at a major bank, you may be about to become a victim of identity fraud. And because Truyu alerts you in near real-time, it helps you to stop the fraud in the moment before an account or new service has been opened.
Just a couple of months in market and Truyu has already prevented major cases of fraud, which have enabled customers to change their licence details and take other steps to prevent future identity fraud. Interestingly, some of these cases of attempted fraud are not yet resulting in an account being opened. Instead, it seems the fraudster could be using an identity check to test whether the stolen details work, with perhaps a view to on-sell them further. If this is what’s happening, Truyu is alerting customers to something that would’ve otherwise likely gone undetected, enabling customers to stop fraudsters in real-time.
How Truyu wants to help the broader bank/fintech identity / fraud eco-system
Truyu believe that fighting fraud and scams will require a whole of ecosystem approach, with the private and public sectors working closely together. One way Truyu think they can help industry and government is by moving fast and testing propositions. Truyu built the app in just over four months to ensure that they could get a solution quickly in the hands of customers, and Truyu are fully committed to sharing learnings from the pilot. Truyu know the Government is building a similar solution and expects to launch the first iteration later in the year, so our learnings may help there.
Technology certainly plays a role in better identification and prevention of identity fraud, and part of our role is to share our learnings with government, corporates, and other members of the community to ensure that we can continue to develop and create better solutions as fraudsters continue to get smarter.
x15 has been a supportive place to build this solution – Truyu are effectively a startup operating within a walled garden inside the Commonwealth Bank, with the ability to leverage and learn from the work that Commonwealth Bank is doing, whilst also being able to build quickly on their own separate technology stack.
x15 builds, buys, and invests in new ventures and new solutions that could benefit the Commonwealth Bank’s 15 million customers, working with the Bank to identify financial services adjacencies and other important problems that can be best solved with technology. X15 has a diverse workforce and regularly hire from the broader startup community as well as our banking colleagues from the wider Commonwealth Bank Group.
About Melanie Hayden
Melanie Hayden started her career as a lawyer, with tier 1 law firm Allens, specialising in banking M&A; she then spent the next 6 years at the Commonwealth Bank, in various roles, most recently being in charge of partnerships and business development; the past year has seen Melanie take on a new challenge; as the Managing Director of a Truyu, a new Identity and fraud prevention business within x15 ventures, the Commonwealth Bank’s venture scaler division.
Outside of her role at Truyu, Melanie is a coach at Startmate, and a Board Member of the Liverpool Women’s Resource Centre, a charity helping women and their children access services they need to live stable lives and help their communities.
