Bank Fraud Forum – One Year Later
0 comment(s)
It was almost exactly one year ago this week that we launched the Bank Fraud Forum. Thank you to you, our readers, for contributing to this ongoing project, and encouraging us in our efforts to foster industry collaboration. While the forum has certainly evolved in response to some great feedback and in our never-ending quest to offer up interesting content, I'm pleased to see that we've stayed true to our original objectives:
The goals of The Bank Fraud ForumSM are to convey insights, opinions and comments on the world of financial crime, as well as serve as an open forum for the fraud fighting community. We strive to offer intelligent, timely and thought-provoking analysis of trends, news, best practices and more, and we hope it inspires others to join the discussion. After all, fraud affects everyone. The more our community collaborates, the better we can respond to this costly, growing threat.
We knew last year that it was a bit of an experiment to introduce a platform for online collaboration about financial crime and related issues. Prior to launch we had some important questions that could only be answered by opening up the site and seeing what would happen:
- Would anti-fraud professionals be willing to embrace relatively new online outlets – blogs and "social media" – for receiving information and sharing ideas?
- Could we offer enough interesting content, and could it be provocative enough to generate discussion and comments while remaining open-minded enough to accept new and opposing ideas?
- Would there be enough fresh material (i.e., fraud stories and topics of interest) to keep people coming back?
The answer to the first question is a resounding "yes". Every week, hundreds of you and your fellow fraud fighters visit the site, receive the emails, subscribe to the RSS feeds and provide comments and links to other interesting and relevant content. Apparently social media isn't just about sharing funny videos on Youtube!
The answer to the second question seems to be "yes" as well. We've had some great comments to the posts, both here on this site and also on other channels (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter) where we provide links to Bank Fraud Forum content. Some of the comment threads have been quite long and detailed, providing an excellent diversity of opinions and information.
The third question was probably the least worrisome. Unfortunately, there is never a shortage of fraud stories in the news, and both new and old, reliable fraud-related issues and challenges to discuss. Visits to the site and email/RSS subscribers have increased every month since launch, so I'll take that as a good sign that we're offering up useful information and a unique perspective.
So one year later, how do you think we're doing? If you have suggestions for improvement, please share them. If you like what the Bank Fraud Forum is offering up after a year, please share it with a colleague. Either way, thanks to all of you for helping make our experiment a success. And as always we want and encourage your opinions and feedback on fighting fraud.