How a Financial Company Lifted Authentication Pass Rates to 90%

When every caller gets the same authentication experience regardless of what they’re trying to do, the customer experience breaks down. For this financial services organization, that meant presenting static knowledge-based authentication to all customers no matter the risk level of the transaction.

The result was predictable: Pass rates were low, frustrated customers who couldn’t complete authentication were landing in the call center queue, and operational costs were climbing — all with no way to distinguish legitimate customers from potential fraudsters.

With help from TransUnion® fraud experts, the organization replaced its one-size-fits-all approach with TruValidate™ Step-Up Authentication, a dynamic, risk-based framework that matches authentication method to transaction risk.

TruValidate Knowledge-Based Verification draws on TransUnion’s proprietary data — covering 120+ million households and 250+ million US adults — to generate “out-of-wallet” questions that go beyond what a fraudster could easily research. Dummy questions are mixed in to make it harder for bad actors to identify which answers matter. Question complexity and exam length is adjusted based on the risk level of the transaction, making the process more targeted and more secure.

For customers who can’t complete KBA but aren’t flagged as risky, TruValidate One-Time Passcode (OTP) provides a friction-right alternative. Rather than routing those customers to a live agent, where social engineering becomes a risk, OTP keeps the interaction contained and secure. 

Together, the two solutions create a step-up authentication flow calibrated to each interaction. Low-risk calls move through quickly, whereas higher-risk transactions get stronger scrutiny. And the organization has a defensible, data-driven rationale for every authentication decision it makes.

Dynamic authentication transformed the call center’s security posture and operational efficiency. With authentication matched to actual transaction risk, legitimate customers move through faster and fraudsters face stronger barriers. And with two-thirds of customers completing authentication via OTP rather than KBA, call center overhead stays low.

Learn how Step-Up Authentication helps identify and verify inbound callers while reducing phone fraud.