Pepper Money Transforms Lending with Fraud Detection and Automation

Pepper Money is a leading and award-winning non-bank lender in Australia and New Zealand.

In just ten years, Pepper Money has grown its Asset Finance business from a small finance provider to one of Australia’s largest asset finance companies. The business has grown its Asset Finance originations rapidly, with $5.7 billion assets under management as of 30 June 2024.

Pepper Money’s Head of Sales (Asset Finance), Andrew Gamble is incredibly proud of their growth. He says it is “largely on the back of great people, embracing enhanced technology and leveraging innovative solutions to build a trusted, efficient lending process.”

Pepper Money is seeking to become market-leading in terms of products and systems. Gamble and his team have developed a state-of-the-art loan system, Solana, and continually enhanced it with integrations with other innovative systems.

“It makes it really simple for customers to do business with us – that’s at the heart of everything we do.”

Front-line fraud detection at scale

Pepper Money’s key priorities are providing a first-rate customer experience, including a faster ‘time to yes’ for customers. It is why Pepper Money sought out the document fraud detection software, Fortiro Protect.

“When my colleague introduced Fortiro Protect to the executive team, it was apparent that this was a product that we hadn’t seen anywhere else. We knew it would complement our current fraud protection methods like biometric checks.”

“There’s a heightened amount of fraud in the market. We identified that we can’t just stand still on fraud. While we had some good controls around high-risk rules, using biometrics and E-Sign [electronic signatures], there was more that we needed to do.  Analysing income documents, such as payslips, was something we thought was a great opportunity for us to identify if there was fraud coming through the business.”

Fortiro Protect empowers Pepper Money to streamline and enhance their document fraud detection processes. By leveraging advanced technology, Fortiro Protect enables more efficient identification and prevention of fraudulent activities, ensuring greater security and reliability in financial transactions. Only high-risk documents identified by Fortiro Protect proceed to the risk team for further investigation.

“Fraud is a massive industry problem. It’s something that all lenders must address. We are proud to be working with Fortiro to use technology to reduce fraud.”

Fortiro Protect can detect fraud in a document’s content, layout and digital properties, including those the human eye cannot see. The software undertakes 80+ fraud checks in 30 seconds to help lenders identify fraudulent financial documents submitted by applicants.

Redaction at scale is now completely automated

The Pepper Money business is also embracing another Fortiro solution, Fortiro Redact.

For lenders, thoroughly redacting sensitive customer data is not optional – it’s a necessity. Failure to comply can result in compliance breaches and severe penalties.

To meet legislative requirements, Pepper Money processed hundreds of documents each month manually.

“Exposed documents had to be manually redacted, re-saved and uploaded back with the application. It was a very slow and cumbersome process. Now we send those documents through Fortiro Redact. The documents are redacted automatically and sent back to us efficiently via an API.”

“Fortiro’s customer service is their biggest strength. The way they have worked with us, and developed the relationship has been great.

The team at Fortiro discover, talk through, and understand what our needs are. The relationship between Fortiro and Pepper Money is testament to our mutual success and that has come from all levels of the team.”

Next step – the fastest speed to payment in the market

Gamble is constantly looking ahead to maximise operational efficiency, which ultimately results in happier customers.

“I don’t think you should stop innovating or embracing the latest technology. When you stand still, you go backwards.”

The next stage of automation and efficiency for Pepper Money is income verification.

The integration of Fortiro’s third solution, Fortiro Accelerate, an income and expense verification solution, will enable Pepper Money to automatically and reliably extract income data from documents like payslips and/or bank statements directly into their loan origination system.

Combined with automated fraud checks, income verification and automated redaction, Pepper Money are aiming to provide faster loan approvals within a few minutes.

“We have grown, well above the market, and we’ve done that by listening to our customers. We know what they want – they want a great system; they want a great process, and they want their money faster. So that’s what some of our automation does, and our work with Fortiro takes it to the next level. Our ambition is to get to the point where the customer applies for a loan and gets paid within the hour or less. We are managing risk, and the customer is getting their money rapidly. That’s a huge result.”

To see how Fortiro can benefit your business, click here to book a complimentary consultation with our team.