P&N Group Strengthens Lending with Automated Document Fraud Detection

P&N Group is one of Australia’s largest customer-owned banking organisations, providing retail and business banking through P&N Bank and BCU Bank.

Supported by more than 600 employees, the Group serves customers through branches, contact centres, mobile and virtual lenders.

As document fraud becomes increasingly sophisticated, P&N Group has strengthened its lending controls with Fortiro, helping its teams make informed decisions based on reliable information, while maintaining a smooth experience for genuine customers.

The Challenge: More Sophisticated Fraud Requires Stronger Controls

Generative AI and digital editing tools are making it easier to manufacture and manipulate convincing financial documents used in lending applications.

P&N Group General Manager of Operations Craig Newman says the change in the fraud landscape is clear.

“Fraud attempts within lending have become increasingly more sophisticated, with malicious actors now using generative AI to manufacture and manipulate supporting documents for loan applications.”

Craig Newman • General Manager of Operations

Fortiro is seeing the same acceleration across the broader lending market. The company has recorded a 150% increase in AI-related document fraud in just four months, while approximately 7% of income documents analysed by Fortiro are identified as high risk.

For P&N Group, the challenge was to strengthen document verification without introducing unnecessary delays or friction for customers.

“As a responsible lender, we need to make accurate lending decisions based on reliable information while protecting our customers from fraud,” Newman says.

“With generative AI making document manipulation increasingly sophisticated, specialist technology strengthens our fraud controls and allows us to manage risk without adding unnecessary friction to the application process.”

The Solution: Greater Confidence Through Document Fraud Detection

P&N Group looked for specialist document fraud technology that could use advanced AI, cross-check documents, validate against multiple sources and rules, and provide access to broader industry information. Just as importantly, results needed to be clear and explainable to the people making lending decisions.

“We wanted accurate, explainable results that gave our people confidence to assess alerts and make informed decisions, with a clear reason for what was flagged.

“Fortiro proved their technology worked,” Newman says.

Fortiro CEO Sean Quagliani says that level of analysis is becoming increasingly important as fraudulent documents become harder to distinguish visually from genuine ones.

“The problem isn’t simply that fraud volumes are increasing. The quality of fraudulent documents is improving. Generative AI is lowering the technical barrier for fraudsters, which means lenders increasingly need to examine what sits beneath the appearance of a document, rather than relying on whether it looks legitimate.”

P&N Group also needed the technology to fit easily into existing processes and scale as fraud risks changed.

“The solution had to be easy to use and fit within our existing processes, so stronger fraud detection did not create unnecessary delays for customers. Integration and scalability were equally important, giving us the flexibility to extend the technology across platforms and respond as fraud risks evolve,” Newman says.

Fortiro now supports P&N Group across all document types, products and channels within the implementation.

The Impact: Greater Confidence in Lending Decisions

For P&N Group, one of the most important outcomes has been greater confidence in the supporting documents used to make lending decisions.

“The use of Fortiro has provided greater confidence in our acceptance of supporting documents. Through Fortiro, we can now source information from a broader range of resources,” says Newman.

This supports P&N Group’s broader commitment to responsible lending and protecting customer trust.

“One of our core values is to focus on members, which means putting our customers at the heart of everything we do. By ensuring we have stronger document verification support, we’re able to confidently make the right decisions based on the correct information, which has derisked the element of potential fraud,” he says.

Fortiro also provides P&N Group with another layer of protection as document fraud continues to evolve.

“Technology such as Fortiro is very important as generative AI becomes more sophisticated. It ensures we stay in front of the risk.”

For financial institutions still heavily dependent on manual document reviews, Newman sees technology as a way to strengthen the expertise already within their teams.

“Financial institutions should consider how technology can complement the expertise of their people and strengthen manual controls. As fraud techniques become more sophisticated, particularly through generative AI, relying on visual checks alone may leave organisations exposed.

“The right technology can help identify manipulation more consistently, support informed decisions and enable institutions to keep pace with emerging risks,” Newman concludes.

Strengthen your defence against document fraud

Fortiro Protect helps financial institutions automatically identify document manipulation and fraud, giving teams greater confidence in the information behind their decisions.

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