The Total Economic Impact™ Of TransUnion Spoofed Call Protection

Reduced Phone Fraud Losses

Evidence and data. Interviewees indicated that prior to Spoofed Call Protection, their organizations lacked a proactive approach to spoofed call fraud attempts, which meant that most attempts reached customers before their organizations were ever notified. Successful spoofed call attempts in the financial services industry led to unauthorized transactions or full account takeovers. As many of the interviewees’ organizations were in highly regulated industries, they were often responsible for making the customer whole regardless of culpability. In other cases, if these organizations were not required to make the customer whole, they chose to do so to protect customer relationships and the broader brand reputation. The resulting financial losses were damaging to the organizations’ bottom lines. With Spoofed Call Protection, interviewees’ organizations stopped spoofed calls at the source with the network carriers before the attempts even reached the customer to improve customer experiences and mitigate the financial losses associated with fraud.

• The senior business director at a financial services organization indicated that their organization saw a 20% reduction in spoofed calling fraud since the adoption of Spoofed Call Protection. They also said that the reduction in spoofed events had a direct correlation with a reduction in fraud-related financial losses as well, saying: “So, we’ve seen direct loss reduction in fraud from this being in place and we’ve done our best. But we’ve done a sort of a pre- and post-analysis that has shown that we’ve driven down losses in the spaces where we expect to drive down losses.” The same interviewee noted that the big driver of losses from spoofed calls prior to the investment was from phishing of one-time pins, leading to an unauthorized transaction or even an account takeover where the financial institution would be responsible for customer remediation. All in all, the reduction in financial losses helped this interviewee’s organization justify the investment, with the interviewee stating, “We would say that this service is worthwhile because it is paying for itself from a [fraud] prevention standpoint.”

• The VP of call center operations at a financial services organization noted that 30% of their organization’s outbound call volume was spoofed before and about 55,000 of the 176,000 outbound calls placed in 2025 were blocked after the adoption of Spoofed Call Protection. Many of the prior spoofed call events resulted in direct financial losses. After investing in Spoofed Call Protection, their organization saw a reduction in direct financial losses with the interviewee estimating that the organization “saw a 70% reduction in financial losses tied to the reduction in spoofed call fraud.”

• The SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization said their organization also saw a reduction in spoofed call claims, noting, “It’s a 35% reduction in claims that were originated as spoof calling events or involved that kind of event.” To measure the financial impact, the interviewee stated, “Of all the fraud losses we experienced in the account takeover space, spoofed calling used to constitute 30% of those losses.”

• The VP, security manager of fraud intelligence at a financial services organization, said that 46% of outbound calls were blocked as an attempted spoofed call once Spoofed Call Protection was adopted and that 20% of fraud involved a full account takeover, which had the largest financial impact in terms of losses to the bank.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• There are 900,000 outbound calls made monthly, and the organization covers 10% of those calls with Spoofed Call Protection in Year 1 to protect public-facing phone numbers from spoofed call fraud. As the fraud morphs and scales over time, the organization adds additional phone calls to the coverage for customer-facing numbers to reach 20% in Year 2 and 40% in Year 3.

• Prior to Spoofed Call Protection, internal investigations found that 35% of outbound calls were spoofed calls attempts. With Spoofed Call Protection, 30% of those spoofing attempts were blocked.

• Average fraud loss incurred by the organization is measured on a per-case basis, which indicates that individuals could succumb to multiple fraud attempts. As such, the composite organization averages $50 of loss per case.

Risks. Reduction in phone fraud losses will vary depending on the following:

• The outbound call volumes at the organization and the adoption of Spoofed Call Protection in terms of the percentage of that volume covered by the platform.

• The spoofed call attempts experienced prior to implementation and the products and processes in place for remediation.

• The average fraud loss will vary greatly depending on the organization, the typical outcome of spoofed call fraud, such as individual transactions made versus full account takeovers, as well as the susceptibility of the customer set.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $25.3 million.

Increased Answer Rates Driving Incremental Revenue

Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that prior to Spoofed Call Protection, more fraud attempts reached customers which damaged their organizations’ brand reputation and customer trust. When their organizations needed to reach customers during authorized outbound communications, they found that answer rates had plummeted. This was especially notable during critical customer lifecycle moments or when their organizations needed to notify customers of potential issues, including of suspected fraud. Certain processes were revenue-generating workflows for the interviewees’ organizations, such as during the account creation process or during loan approvals. If the interviewees’ organizations could not reach customers throughout these processes, money was left on the table for the business. With Spoofed Call Protection in place, interviewees’ organizations blocked spoofed call fraud before it reached customers and therefore built more trust with customers to achieve better response and answer rates for authentic outbound calls that drive incremental revenue for the business.

• The VP of call center operations at a financial services organization saw a 6-point reduction in abandonment rate, down to 4.9% since the adoption of Spoofed Call Protection as a measurement of repaired customer trust and better answer rates for critical customer outreach.

• The VP, security manager of fraud intelligence at a financial services organization corroborated the improvement to answer rates relative to the investment in Spoofed Call Protection, stating, “We’ve seen between a 15% to 20% improvement to answer rates with Spoofed Call Protection and expect to see even higher improvements when we roll out Branded Call Display from TransUnion as well.”

• The senior business director at a financial services organization agreed, noting, “I think as part of the product, one of the benefits you get is when you do make a legitimate call, it looks more legitimate.” The same interviewee also explained how the better answer rates accelerated revenue for the institution. They said, “For example, if a customer answers an outbound call on the first attempt, we can accelerate the account creation process and create a new account faster and secure that business for the organization sooner.”

• The SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization indicated that a reduction in frequent customer call backs was one contributing factor to an improved SLA within customer service. Customers no longer had to call back to complete an action with the institution, and the volume of fraud-related inbound calls was reduced, which helped lower the overall volume of inbound calls: “Every time we have to make an outbound call, we tracked how many times we had to call the client [and] leave messages. Then the customer calls back, or we have to follow up with yet another call. [With Spoofed Call Protection], we did see a decline in those reattempts because on the very first attempt we were able to get customers in some cases.” The interviewee estimated that the calls associated with the account creation process were reduced by 20%, which also accelerated the time to create the account and contribute to the business. Generally, the interviewee felt that customer trust had been restored to some degree: “The trust factor is there. We saw good feedback after we introduced some of these technologies because the customer can identify a call from our organization versus a random call.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• There are 900,000 outbound calls made monthly, and the organization covers 10% of those calls with Spoofed Call Protection in Year 1 to protect public-facing phone numbers from spoofed call fraud. As the fraud morphs and scales over time, the organization adds additional phone calls to the coverage for customer-facing numbers to reach 20% in Year 2 and 40% in Year 3.

• The composite organization measures the revenue impact through the impact to the loan approval process. As such, 50% of the outbound calls are made from a loan-related product phone number. These calls previously had an abandonment rate of 11% but that rate improves to 5% by Year 3.

• The additional calls benefit from the 50% average loan approval rate and a $2,500 average loan amount to achieve up to $162 million in revenue by Year 3. Loans have a 3% net profit margin consisting mainly of interest and processing fees.

Risks. Increased answer rates driving incremental revenue may vary depending on the following:

• The outbound call volumes at the organization and the adoption of Spoofed Call Protection in terms of the percentage of that volume covered by the platform.

• How the organization measures revenue impact. The composite organization measures revenue impact by the impact to loan-related calls; however, there are other processes that can be improved through higher answer rates and result in incremental revenue for the organization, such as the account creation process.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.8 million.

Improved Customer Service Agent Productivity

Evidence and data. Without a proper spoofed call protection platform or tool in place at the interviewees’ organizations prior to the implementation of Transunion’s platform, customers were the first line of defense against these fraud attempts. As such, it was up to the customer to notify these organizations of the attempted fraud, and they did so through the contact center channels available to them. These calls increased total inbound call volumes at the contact center, flooding agent queues with everything from fraud inquiries to notifications of attempted fraud and, unfortunately, remediation requests from victims of successful fraud. The additional calls and the extended handle times strained agent productivity. With Spoofed Call Protection in place, the interviewees’ organizations saw that both call volumes and handle times reduced to improve agent productivity and save operational expenses in the contact center.

• Interviewees noted that inbound calls related to fraud inquiries were often long calls, especially those that were determined to be real fraud events. By reducing spoofed call fraud, call centers saw improvements to average wait times. For example, the VP of call center operations at a financial services organization said they saw a 30% reduction in average wait time after the investment in Spoofed Call Protection. Additionally, because of improvements to customer trust and because fewer spoofing attempts reached customers entirely, call volumes in call centers were reduced. The same interviewee estimated an 18% reduction in overall call volumes from fewer abandonments and callbacks for true outbound calls, and fewer calls to verify fraud attempts. While the inbound calls made to verify fraud ran anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 to 3 minutes if the call was a true outbound call from the organization or an attempt at fraud that was effectively avoided by the customer. On top of the verification calls, 4% to 5% of inbound calls were made by customers who had fallen victim to spoofed call fraud. These calls ran upwards of 30 to 45 minutes for the agent before they could redirect to investigation and remediation teams.

• The SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization saw a 20% improvement in customer service SLAs in the contact center due to better alerts and customers answering calls in the first try.

• The VP, security manager of fraud intelligence at a financial organization said their organization experienced a reduction in total inbound call volumes of between 15% and 30% from fewer spoofed call fraud inquiries to call centers. Additionally, 10% of spoofed call inquiries were to report an actual fraud event and those calls ran about 45 minutes in terms of handle time, which taxed call center agents.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization handles 2 million monthly inbound calls but only 40% to 50% ever involve a live agent due to interactive voice response (IVR) containment rates. Twenty percent of the inbound calls handled by an agent are calls related to spoofed calling events, either as a means of verification or a means to report a true fraud event.

• With Spoofed Call Protection, the organization reduces this overall call volume by 16% annually by proactively stopping spoofed call attempts before they reach the customer, thus saving the agent the 1.5 minutes of time spent with a customer verifying a true outbound call from the organization or confirming an avoided spoofed calling attempt.

• Additionally, 4% of the inbound calls handled by an agent and related to spoofed calling were made to report a successful fraud attempt. These calls took 30 minutes of agent time, during which the agents collected information before handing the customer off to the appropriate investigation or remediation teams.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a customer service agent is $30.

Risks. Improved customer service agent productivity may vary depending on the following:

• Inbound call volumes experienced by the organization, the percentage of such calls handled by an agent, and those related specifically to spoofed calling attempts as well as the KPIs related to such calls, including handle times.

• The spoofed call attempts experienced prior to implementation and the products and processes in place for remediation.

• Industry and geographical location impacts agent hourly rates.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.1 million.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Reputational or brand improvement from proactively protecting customers from spoofed call events. Prior to Spoofed Call Protection, customers of the interviewees’ organizations were self-reporting incidents of fraud that originated as spoofed calling events. Not only was the fraud often successful, but the customers themselves were the only line of defense against fraudsters and were responsible for reporting said fraud. A senior business director at a financial services organization noted that both the fraud events themselves and the lack of perceived protection from their institution caused reputational damage to their organization: ”[With Spoofed Call Protection, we saw], reputational benefits because we’re protecting our phone numbers from being spoofed which matters from a customer perception.”
  The VP of call center operations at a financial services organization recognized that fraudsters were ever-changing and would likely find another way to commit fraud if there were protections against spoofed calling. However, they also noted that their organization needed to do its due diligence, including implementing tools and platforms, to help block fraud attempts wherever possible. They said that without protections in place, their organization would be perceived as vulnerable in the market by fraudsters: “But how do we get to a point where the path of least resistance is not with [our organization] so that the fraudsters think to go to a different bank where there are fewer protections in place?”
  An SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization furthered that their organization could appear vulnerable to their own customer base as well. They said: “We also compare that against our industry peers like other banks and all that in different forums. And that’s where we saw that at least our name was not popping up so much in some of those reports of which banks are getting spoofed more.”

• Less friction for customers in their interactions with the organization to improve CX. Spoofed Call Protection replaced the manual methods of customer authentication during outbound communications that were in place prior to the interviewees’ organizations’ investment. Additionally, call centers received fewer spoofed call claims reported by customers. Together, interviewees noted these improvements reduced customer friction in call centers by reducing average handle times, overall call volumes, and abandonment rates. As such, the interviewees’ organization received fewer customer complaints and improved customer experience scores. The VP of call center operations at a financial services organization said: “We had less friction for our customers, which reduces [friction]. So, you’ve got really a combination. ... Any one thing can have an impact, but you start to get some synergy going. Today, we’re looking at about a 20-point lift in service levels.” An SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization corroborated the lift in service levels by adding: “We have seen lower complaints when it comes to outbound phone calls where customers are able to identify us. They can easily identify it from the bank, so those kinds of complaints went down.”

• Improved ability to better meet regulatory and governance requirements by proving due diligence and providing data to support audit requests. Financial institutions are governed by strict regulatory and governance requirements. Interviewees noted that having Spoofed Call Protection in place helped not only prove due diligence but also provided necessary data regarding certain events that were blocked due to suspected fraud, such as a customer transaction. A senior business director at a financial services organization said, “Protecting our numbers from being spoofed also matters from a regulatory and a well-managed perspective, which is pretty important for being a large financial institution.”
  The SVP of fraud prevention strategy at a financial services organization stated the importance of having the data from Spoofed Call Protection to help make the audit process more efficient when audit requests come in from regulators, stating: “When a customer is trying to move money, it’s their right — if they have their money with us, it’s their right to move the money when they want. So if there are transactions that we suspect as fraud and we decline with our proper due diligence, that’s a red mark when the audit happens. And that’s where some of these outbound calls without resolution, [where] if it sits and then eventually, we decline, we’ll have to justify [to the regulator]. So that’s where this really helps, because we were able to reduce some of those call volumes.”

• Other operational cost savings. With spoofed calling fraud events reduced, the interviewees’ organizations redirected fraud investigation team resources to fight other fraud types and instances. The senior business director at a financial services organization said that while there is still some monitoring and investigative work that is happening related to the Spoofed Call Protection implementation, it is more focused on making sure the service works properly. Therefore, their organization’s investigation team can focus on investigating the fraud types that slip through the cracks. The VP of call center operations at another financial services organization indicated that the reduction in spoofed call fraud has “freed up a lot of the bandwidth for the involved risk and fraud teams.”
  In addition to the impact to internal investigation teams, there were also operational efficiencies within remediation workflows, some of which reduced organizational expenses for the interviewees’ organizations. The VP security manager of fraud intelligence at a financial services organization noted that most spoofed call fraud resulted in either credit card compromise or full account takeovers. For card compromise situations, the investigation starts with an inbound call to customer care center, then the customer is redirected to card loss prevention team to review accounts and identify fraudulent transactions before they reissue card. Each of the involved teams redirected time savings from reduced spoofed call events to help customers through other fraud events. Additionally, there were also shipping and printing costs associated with the reissued card that the interviewee’s organization often ate on behalf of the customer. The interviewee said that, similarly, account takeover events also started with an inbound call to customer care center, which were then redirected to remediation teams and the process required multiple touch points with the customer, which was a large operational burden.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Spoofed Call Protection and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Expanding spoofed call protection coverage and ramping overall fraud protection. As interviewees’ organizations realized the value of Spoofed Call Protection in its ability to reduce real fraud, they opted to expand the platform to cover more business areas and regions. The senior business director at a financial services organization said: “Now, we have additional businesses looking at implementing Spoofed Call Protection. For example, we have a Canadian credit card business that’s looking at it. So there are other groups that are interested in onboarding.” The same interviewee recognized that part of the expansion to new business areas naturally led to a more global approach to spoofed call protection strategies by including functions in both Canada and the UK. The SVP of fraud prevention strategy agreed: “[Our organization plans to] cover more channels in additional to call channels, to protect against spoofing attempts in text channels and the like.” Both interviewees indicated that they expanded coverage areas and functionality to meet fraudsters where they were as they were constantly shifting their approaches.
  The VP of call center operations at a financial services organization leveraged the success of the Spoofed Call Protection platform to bid for and implement other fraud protection technologies. They said: “[This investment in Spoofed Call Protection] was the enabler for us to get a number of other fraud tools approved as we move forward because there was a lot of confidence that came with a lot of real data as proof. Because of how effective the tool was, it enabled us to do a few other things, such as voice, biometric authentication, etc.”

• Enhancing focus on customer education. While interviewees lamented that prior to Spoofed Call Protection, they often relied on customer education to prevent fraud, they found themselves returning to the customer education approach once the product was implemented. The renewed focus on customer education was born out of access to more data, insights, and learnings on behalf of the organization that could help protect customers against any fraud attempts that fall through the cracks. The senior business director said: “We are contemplating being more forthright with what we’re doing to protect customers in our customer education. We’ve cited some of the spoof call protection tools in our communications with customers, regulators, and the like.” The SVP of fraud prevention strategy agreed that they would build on customer education and put processes in place to further trust: “That way, when the client — even though they pick up, if they are still in doubt — we can instruct them [to] go log in to the app or click on that push, and you’ll see that we are actually calling you regarding this. So that way, it’s like a two-way confirmation for the client.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).