“The Federal Reserve today released a Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit to provide financial institutions, consumers and businesses with an online repository of insights and resources on synthetic identity fraud…The toolkit is designed to increase awareness about this type of fraud, enable the payments industry to better identify and fight it, and foster payments industry collaboration to improve synthetic identity fraud mitigation.”

“The Federal Reserve today announced an industry-recommended definition of synthetic identity fraud, which was developed by a focus group of fraud experts in response to a widespread issue: differing definitions in use make it difficult to identify and address this type of fraud…The industry-recommended definition of synthetic identity fraud (SIF) is the use of a combination of personally identifiable information (PII) to fabricate a person or entity in order to commit a dishonest act for personal or financial gain.”

“Credit card and bank account fraud have soared during the pandemic, with fraudsters intercepting consumer data via retail and banking disruptions and worsening synthetic ID fraud. Lenders say synthetic ID fraud risk will be their top area of concern for the next two years, according to a new study by Aite Group, with nearly three-quarters of institutions ranking it as a top challenge.”