Case Study: Apex Bridging
How Apex Bridging automates underwriting with instant document verification.
We’re trusted by the world's leading companies
of unique submitted documents were marked with high-risk alerts
Fraud Finder is now used on 100% of docs that Apex process
Is the highest attempted fraud amount protected in a single application
My Team at Apex initially thought “Oh no another change to process” until they used the system. It is simple and so effective; results are easy to understand and it provides you with the confidence to either move forward or walk away from a case. This system saved us from funding a very large fraudulent transaction on the last day of our trial! We signed up instantly and the support we have had from the Fraud Finder team whilst we learn and navigate the system has been just perfect.
Meet Apex...
A case study on how Apex Bridging protect their lending book with an automated document fraud detection portal
Apex Bridging is one of the UK’s leading bridging finance companies. They pride themselves on common sense lending. They don’t credit score, they don’t overwhelm their clients with complex application questions or portal interactions and they provide a personalised service where the customer’s point of contact is also their underwriter.
Apex Bridging are specialist in interest-only short-term residential property loans. One of their USPs is that they look for reasons to lend, rather than reasons not to. This means they will consider any finance application. Condition is irrelevant in their eyes as it reduces time, cost and hassle which gets a formal offer out to their customers quicker.
As winners of the 'Bridging Loans Provider of the Year – UK' award, Apex were looking for a solution that would maintain the benefits of their offering (such as not requiring a credit check, and offering a quick response to applications) while ensuring they were protected from chancers that could take advantage of their business model. After all, Apex issues loans up to £800,000 in some instances and as the lender, the financial burden falls with them.
Whilst Apex already had in place several anti-fraud solutions for ID verification as well as partnerships with well-known anti-fraud regulators such as CIFAS, the team of well-equipped underwriters were still checking bank statements, utility bills and other financial documents manually.
As proficient as Sarah and her team were at analysing bank statements manually, document fraud is getting so good that in many cases, instances of tampering can easily evade the detection capabilities of the human eye without technological support. With an absence of credit checks, Fraud Finder seemed a great fit for implementation to enhance operational due diligence, whilst maintaining speed and fair assessment.
Out of all the checks submitted to Fraud Finder since our onboarding with Apex, 18% of submitted documents have returned a high-risk result.
There is one applicant in particular who submitted a Barclays Savings Account statement and a council tax bill as proof of funds and address to secure a staggering loan from Apex, valued at £800,000.
In less than 20 seconds, Fraud Finder was able to uncover the exact points of digital tampering on each document to disprove the information that was being submitted to Apex as true. A few functions debunked the information provided, including our font analysis.
As you can see from the image. On the left, the Barclays statement submitted by the fraudster. On the right, our font analysis view, which colour codes every single different font that appears in the document.
We can see clear signs of editing around all of the dates that appear on the statement and even more alarmingly, around all of the balance totals too.
We could also tell that this document was edited 5 months after it was created and that the software used to edit the statement appeared on our blacklist.
The next document the applicant submitted was a council tax bill. There’s a very important piece of information that had been deleted from the original version. Little did they know that our software can restore deleted data in documents.
The information in blue, deleted from the submission for finance, shows a series of unpaid council tax bills and an ongoing disputed court case.
We are delighted to have helped protect such a large sum of money with our instant, automated fraud technology.
Whether you offer mortgages, business financing, asset finance or consumer loans, with Fraud Finder you can prevent the risk of lending fraud.
About
Fraud and risk in Bridging Loans
Features applicable:
Advanced document analysis
Open banking algorithms
Data enrichment
Raw banking > JSON code conversion
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