What’s up, fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward!

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Angela Diaz to talk about something that sounds simple on the surface, but honestly, it creates more fraud gaps than a lot of teams realize. We throw around terms like controls, strategy, and process all the time in fraud operations. We say them like they mean the same thing. They do not. And when we start treating them like they are interchangeable, that is exactly where things begin to break down.

This conversation came directly from Angela, and I loved that immediately because when a practitioner says, “we need to talk about this,” that usually means there is something real happening inside fraud programs right now. And this one is real. I have seen it. You have probably seen it too. Teams are busy, alerts are firing, processes are moving, and yet losses are still getting through. That is usually not because nobody cares. It is because the foundation is off.

So this episode is really about getting back to basics in the best possible way. We slow down and separate fraud controls from fraud strategy and from fraud processes, because if we cannot define those correctly, we are going to build the rest of the fraud program on top of confusion. And once that happens, fraudsters do what they always do. They find the gap and they use it.

• The real difference between fraud controls, fraud strategy, and fraud processes
• Why preventative vs detective controls matter more than most teams realize
• How process mapping in fraud helps expose operational fraud gaps
• Why control performance monitoring needs to be part of every fraud risk management conversation
• What the Chase check fraud incident shows us about fraud loss prevention controls
• How fraud leaders can tell whether they have a true layered approach or just more stuff
• Why fraud monitoring needs to connect back to strategy, not just activity
• Where process gaps in banking show up in ATM fraud controls, payments risk controls, and check fraud control in banking
• Why vendor management fraud risk and lack of line of sight create another layer of exposure

• You work in fraud operations and feel like your team is doing a lot but still not getting ahead of loss
• You are trying to mature your fraud program and need clearer thinking around financial institution fraud controls
• You are working on a fraud risk assessment and need a better way to think about risk entry points
• You know your team has processes in place, but you are not sure whether they are actually functioning like controls
• You want a more practical way to think about fraud control strategy in banking without making it overly complicated

If this episode makes you pause and rethink something in your own program, send it to your team. Really. Start the conversation. Pressure test the way controls, strategy, and process actually show up in your environment. And if you want more of these real conversations, make sure you are subscribed to Fraud Forward and signed up for the Monday Fraud Fix.

What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome to Fraud Forward! This episode is just me and you, and honestly, that felt right. Fraud Forward has always been about real conversations, but every once in a while, I think it matters to pause, zoom out, and talk peer to peer about where we’ve been, what I’ve been building, and where this work is going next. No guests. No panel. No polished back-and-forth. Just a real check-in on fraud prevention in banking and the decisions that are shaping what comes next.

This episode matters because the questions in front of us are getting bigger, not smaller. We are no longer just talking about fraud trends in isolation. We are talking about AI in banking, payment authorization, customer dispute resolution in banks, real-time decisioning, and the governance problems sitting underneath all of it. If you work in fraud, risk, payments, compliance, or digital banking, you already know this is not a future-state conversation. It is here now.

And that is really the core of this episode. Fraud prevention in banking is no longer just about identifying bad activity after the fact. It is about whether institutions can make better decisions earlier, with better context, better governance, and better alignment across teams. That is the shift. That is what I have been hearing in conference hallways, seeing in operator conversations, and building toward behind the scenes.

I also wanted to make this episode personal because that matters too. I have sat in the practitioner seat. I know what it feels like to defend fraud losses in a boardroom, to get asked how your institution compares to peers, to explain why a rule fired, and to carry the pressure of making the right call with incomplete information. So when I talk about AI agents in banking, banking fraud detection, or responsible AI in banking, I am not talking from a distance. I am talking from the perspective of somebody who knows what it feels like when the operational reality hits the fraud desk first.

• We need to stop treating fraud as only a detection problem and start treating it as a governance and decisioning problem.
• We need better ways to evaluate customer authorization fraud, disputes, and real-time transaction risk before losses harden.
• We need clearer operator-level benchmarking so banks and credit unions can advocate for resources with facts, not guesswork.
• We need stronger collaboration across fraud, compliance, product, operations, and leadership because no one team can solve this alone.

• A look back at the biggest themes from recent Fraud Forward conversations, including AI, KYC, payment fraud, and systems-level risk.
• What I have been building behind the scenes to support fraud fighters with clearer signals, faster context, and more practical guidance.
• Why benchmarking has become one of the most important gaps to solve for community banks and credit unions.
• What I am seeing across conferences, operator conversations, and industry events right now.
• My take on why scams, chargebacks, first-party fraud, and regulation are all colliding in ways the industry can no longer ignore.

• Work in fraud prevention in banking and need a clearer view of where the industry is heading
• Want a peer-level perspective on AI in banking, governance, and transaction risk
• Are trying to connect fraud operations to executive conversations about budget, staffing, and strategy
• Need stronger language and better framing around customer dispute resolution in banks and customer authorization fraud
• Care about building fraud programs that are more proactive, more defensible, and more useful to the institution

If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps with getting the word out.

What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome to Fraud Forward!

This episode picks right back up in one of the most important places this conversation could go: what happens after we move past the shiny AI headlines and start talking about control, governance, disputes, and real accountability inside financial services.

Because that is the real conversation around agentic banking.

Not just whether AI in banking is possible.

Not just whether customers will use it.

But whether banks are ready to govern it responsibly when AI agents in banking start influencing payments, authorization, disputes, and customer trust.

What I really appreciated about this part of the conversation is that we did not stay at the hype layer. We got into what agentic payments actually require if institutions want to use them safely. We talked about AI governance in banking, AI transaction monitoring, banking compliance and AI, and what it means to preserve trust when AI banking transactions start happening closer to the customer.

And that matters.

Because if agentic banking is going to become part of the future of financial services AI, then we have to build it with intention. We have to build it with controls. And we have to make sure trust infrastructure in banking grows with the technology instead of getting left behind by it.

• How agentic banking can solve real customer friction in ways traditional digital banking tools often cannot
• Why AI agents in banking create new questions around governance, accountability, and control
• How AI payment authorization, OTP checks, and layered safeguards can help make AI banking transactions safer
• Why banking compliance and AI need stronger context sharing, better auditability, and clearer ownership
• How AI transaction monitoring may need to evolve from reviewing transactions alone to reviewing prompts, instructions, and agent-led behavior
• Why banking dispute resolution becomes more complex when a customer authorizes an AI agent instead of initiating every action directly
• How community bank innovation and regional bank innovation can benefit from agentic banking without giving up control

• You work in fraud, compliance, payments, risk, digital banking, or bank operations
• You are trying to understand how agentic banking may affect governance and customer trust
• You are evaluating AI in banking beyond chatbot functionality
• You care about banking fraud prevention, AI fraud prevention, and safer banking with AI
• You want a more practical conversation about how AI-powered banking actually works inside real institutions
• You are asking how banks can modernize customer experience without creating new gaps in control

If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.