Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, two of Germany’s largest lenders, have teamed up with the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV), the umbrella body for the country’s savings banks, to form a joint venture that will let financial institutions exchange fraud intelligence in a secure and legally compliant way.
The new entity will give its customers, chiefly banks and other financial firms, a shared base for passing data protection-compliant information across institutional lines. The aim is to catch fraudulent activity sooner than any single lender could manage alone.
The founders point to a structural weakness in how fraud is currently tackled. Criminals routinely open accounts at several banks and move money rapidly between them, while each institution typically sees only a fragment of that activity. The joint venture’s products are designed to speed up the flow of relevant intelligence between participants.
Its first application targets scams including phishing, investment fraud, merchandise fraud and romance scams, and the founders describe the tool as well advanced in development. Under the model, a bank that spots an account being used for fraud can flag it on the shared platform, allowing other institutions to factor that intelligence into their own defences and respond earlier to suspicious behaviour.
Each participating bank keeps full responsibility for judging the shared information and choosing what protective action to take. The platform relies on cryptographic techniques such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC), which allow specific data points to be matched without institutions revealing their complete underlying datasets. Data protection, purpose limitation, data minimisation and controlled disclosure sit at the core of the design.
The founders view fraud prevention as only the starting point. They intend to widen the shared infrastructure step by step, adding further fraud prevention tools as well as compliance-focused applications. This roadmap tracks the evolution of European regulation, where forthcoming payments rules on information sharing between institutions to tackle fraud and money laundering are expected to open the door to deeper collaboration.
Both current and future products will also be offered to other obliged entities. The shareholders argue that every new participant enlarges the pool of intelligence and raises the value for all members, and they hope to encourage cooperation across sectors. The venture is positioned as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, existing government and supervisory efforts against financial crime.
Commerzbank chief risk officer Bernd Spalt said, “Financial crime is becoming increasingly professional and does not stop at company boundaries. That is why it is right for us to work more closely together in this area and pool our experience and capabilities. Ultimately, what matters is that we identify risks earlier and effectively protect our customers.”
Deutsche Bank head of personal banking Dominik Hennen said, “Fraud can be contained more effectively when banks can securely share relevant findings with one another in a legally compliant manner. With the joint company, we are combining intelligent data use, modern technology and industry-wide cooperation. In this way, we aim to better protect our customers and set new standards in fraud prevention.”
German Savings Banks Association executive member of the board Joachim Schmalzl said, “We are putting fraud prevention on a broader footing and opening up the collaboration to other banks as well. After all, security in payments is not a matter of competition but a shared responsibility of the banking industry.”
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