Fraud isn’t simply “up.” It’s becoming more automated, more coordinated, and more effective at exploiting the gaps between systems. The latest industry findings show most financial organizations are seeing fraud increase, and an overwhelming majority of decision-makers are noticing more financial crimes being committed with AI technologies.

That combination – higher frequency plus smarter execution – forces a strategic shift. Fraud prevention can’t be treated as a back-office control function anymore. It has to operate as an always-on, real-time decision layer that protects customers, preserves trust, and enables the next wave of products, including instant payments.

That’s the world RembrandtAi® is built for: real-time fraud alerting and risk assessment that helps banks and credit unions move fast without taking on blind risk. And now the next step is write back – real-time, fully automated action. Institutions define the actions they want automated from a menu of responses, and RembrandtAi® initiates those write back actions directly to the client’s core in real time – so teams can move from “seeing” risk to stopping it automatically.

The new fraud stack: synthetic identities, account takeover, and authorized push payments

Across the industry, leaders report that the most frequent fraud types by case volume are:

• Synthetic identity fraud
• Account takeover (ATO)
• Authorized push payment (APP) fraud
  

This matters because those three categories form a modern progression:

• Create or assemble an identity that passes basic checks
• Hijack an account through compromised credentials, social engineering, or channel manipulation
• Move money quickly, often by pressuring the customer into “authorizing” the transfer
  

It’s not just fraud – it’s an assembly line.

What RembrandtAi® changes: Instead of treating these as separate problems handled by different teams and tools, RembrandtAi® approaches them as connected stages of a single threat lifecycle. That’s how you stop the chain before it reaches the cash-out moment that stop can be automated in real time based on the institution’s chosen response.

Fraud has gone omnichannel – and criminals are attacking the seams

Online banking remains a major fraud target, but the industry is seeing fraud increase across mobile banking, contact centers, and branches as well. Criminals are adapting to stronger digital controls by shifting to whichever channel has the least friction and the most operational blind spots.

And here’s the operational reality: almost every financial organization with branches still requires in-person support for certain activities, including identity-sensitive account maintenance and resolving fraud claims. That makes most institutions inherently hybrid – digital plus physical – whether they market themselves that way or not.

Why seams matter: Fraudsters don’t have to beat every control. They only have to find the gap between controls. A classic example is using a contact center interaction to change a phone number, then using that change to reset credentials digitally and drain the account.

What RembrandtAi® changes: RembrandtAi® is designed to deliver real-time fraud alerting and risk assessment across channels, so a risky identity or account change in one touchpoint can immediately influence risk posture everywhere else – before the next step happens. extends that same real-time capability into action, enabling immediate, automated response to high-risk events without waiting for a manual workflow.

The uncomfortable trend: fewer institutions are catching fraud at onboarding

One of the most important signals in the industry data is that fewer organizations are catching fraud during onboarding than the year prior, and fraud is increasingly identified in real time at the moment of transaction – or worse, after the transaction has completed.

When fraud is discovered only after money moves, you’re no longer in prevention mode. You’re in recovery mode. And recovery is slow, expensive, and reputation-damaging.

What RembrandtAi® changes: Prevention has to happen at the speed of the transaction. RembrandtAi® focuses on instant fraud alerting and risk assessment so institutions can act while they still have leverage – when the transfer can be challenged, slowed, stepped up, or stopped.Those actions can be fully automated in real time based on the institution’s predefined playbook.

The real cost isn’t just losses – it’s product paralysis

Yes, losses are significant. A meaningful portion of institutions report multi-million-dollar fraud and chargeback losses, and most leaders believe external fraud-loss reporting is inaccurate, with expectations that underreporting will increase.

But the strategic cost shows up somewhere else: product roadmaps.

Decision-makers overwhelmingly say fraud risk is the primary factor when deciding what new products to offer customers. Organizations report delaying or avoiding initiatives such as:

• Higher-risk segments and higher limits
• Automated digital onboarding
• Real-time and instant payments
• Domestic and cross-border wires
• Embedded finance / BaaS partnerships
• Card-not-present e-commerce expansion
  

Fraud isn’t only stealing money – it’s stealing momentum.

What RembrandtAi® changes: The goal is to replace blunt restrictions with precision risk decisions. Instead of delaying a capability for everyone, institutions can use real-time risk assessment to selectively apply controls only when risk is elevated – keeping legitimate customers moving while stopping fraud.RembrandtAi® makes that precision scalable by turning decisions into automated actions, executed instantly.

How most institutions respond today: step-up, manual review, freezes – and a lot of friction

When risk is detected, the most common first moves include:

• Step-up authentication
• Manual review
• Freezing accounts
• Extending hold periods
• Lowering payment limits
  

The presence of manual review near the top is telling: many organizations are compensating for risk uncertainty with labor. That slows operations, increases false positives, and creates bad customer moments at exactly the wrong time.

Most institutions also rely heavily on signals like MFA, fraud risk scores, and device verification to authenticate customers in real time.

What RembrandtAi® changes: RembrandtAi® is built to reduce the dependency on manual queues by improving confidence in decisioning. When risk can be scored and acted on instantly, you can automate the right response – step-up only when needed, limit exposure dynamically, and alert instantly when a customer appears to be under manipulation. RembrandtAi® takes it further by automating the response itself – initiating the institution’s chosen action directly to the core in real time, instead of routing the case to a task pad or queue.

The budget shift is real: institutions are investing in identity and AI-driven prevention

Fraud budgets are substantial, with many organizations spending a meaningful percentage of annual budget on fraud prevention. Most decision-makers report increasing investment in AI-driven prevention technologies, and a strong majority report positive ROI from fraud prevention efforts.

Leaders also report that the most impactful investment for reducing fraud has been implementing an identity and fraud prevention platform, with broad investment in identity solutions to manage risk and improve customer experience.

This is the signal of a market moving from fragmented point tools to integrated, decision-centric systems – and toward systems that can take action automatically, not just generate alerts.

Fraud prevention is now a growth function – and the industry is saying it out loud

A decisive majority of leaders agree that fraud prevention efforts help grow the business, and that fraud prevention is a key driver of customer trust. They also link strong fraud prevention to improvements in satisfaction, willingness to purchase additional products, and loyalty.

This is the shift RembrandtAi® was designed to accelerate: fraud prevention that supports growth, not friction.

Because when you can trust the identity, you can:

• approve more legitimate customers
• reduce unnecessary step-ups and holds
• raise limits confidently
• launch faster payment rails safely
• expand into new products without betting the bank
  

Write back makes that practical by ensuring the right protective actions happen automatically and immediately, without slowing down legitimate users.

What this means for FedNow and instant payments

Instant rails compress decision time to near zero. Fraud teams don’t get “later.”

If an institution delays real-time payments because the fraud posture isn’t ready, that’s not just a fraud decision – it’s a competitive decision. Customers and businesses will gravitate toward institutions that can deliver speed safely.

RembrandtAi® aligns to the instant-payments reality by focusing on real-time fraud alerting and risk assessment – supporting faster interdiction, smarter controls, and safer approvals at the moment it matters most. RembrandtAi® enables real-time containment by executing the institution’s chosen response instantly – directly to the core – when risk is detected.

The 2026 playbook: how modern institutions win with RembrandtAi®

Based on the report’s industry findings, the winning posture in 2026 looks like this:

• Real-time risk assessment at the moment of action (not after losses)
• Omnichannel visibility so criminals can’t exploit handoffs
• Precision controls instead of blanket slowdowns and broad denials
• Real-time, fully automated action – write back – initiated directly to the core
• Fraud prevention treated as a growth enabler – because trust is the product
  

That is exactly where RembrandtAi® fits: delivering the real-time fraud intelligence institutions need to protect customers, satisfy evolving expectations, and launch the next wave of products – including FedNow – without hesitation.