2022 State of Omnichannel Authentication Survey

Just 1 in 10 consumers give credit to organizations for improving customer experience in the past year, while other consumers fault these same organizations for long wait times for service, answering repetitive questions and experiencing impersonal interactions. These negative experiences are symptoms of legacy authentication approaches which inconvenience consumers without increasing protection against fraud. Consumers and organizations lost $24 billion to traditional identity fraud in 2021, a 79% increase year-over-year. The 2022 State of Omnichannel Authentication survey shared how organizational leaders across industries applied authentication to improve customer experience and fraud mitigation.

Finding 1: Call center fraud attacks increased — Over half of respondents reported an increase in the frequency of callers attempting to commit fraud, with respondents from financial institutions worrying more about this change.

Finding 2: Authenticate callers before they reach agents — Over two-thirds (70%) of respondents prefer to complete authentication pre-answer or while a caller engages with an interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Finding 3: Frequency of threat activity continued to rise — More than one-in-two respondents reported increasing call center fraud activity coming via call spoofing and call virtualization services.

Finding 4: Widespread plans for multi-factor authentication varied in detail — Most respondents planned to implement multi-factor authentication, either by replacing KBA entirely (35%) or supplementing it with another authentication approach (22%).

Finding 5: Financial institutions worried less about OTP fraud than other industries — The prospect of fraudsters intercepting OTPs intended to authenticate customers worried 73% of non- financial institution respondents, but far fewer financial institution respondents (44%).

Finding 6: Respondents prioritized fraud detection capabilities — Respondents continued to seek the right balance between detecting fraud risk (very important for 60% of respondents), warning against first-time attacks (59%), reducing false positives (58%) and segmenting inbound callers based on risk signals (57%).

The name of this report has been updated to better reflect the changing nature of consumer identity and customer experience.TransUnion remains committed to bringing forth cross- industry insights that help organizational leaders secure trust across channels and deliver seamless customer experiences.