Cross-Functional Partnerships
How fraud teams work with product, engineering, growth, support, legal, compliance, finance and payment partners: mutual needs, working agreements, RACI and shared metrics.
Core components
Partner map
| Partner | What they want | What fraud needs from them | What fraud gives them | Common friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product | Conversion, speed, simple UX | Early visibility of launches; fraud requirements in PRDs; logging; kill switches | Launch conditions that protect the launch; friction designed in the least costly way | "Fraud is slowing us down" |
| Engineering | Stable systems, clear requirements | Event logging, decision APIs, rule deploy capacity, on-call for incidents | Clear specs, prioritized asks, incident context | Fraud asks arrive as urgent, with no spec |
| Growth / Marketing | Acquisition, engagement, promo ROI | Promo mechanics before launch; distribution plans; budget caps | Abuse-adjusted ROI; guardrails that keep promos alive (see Promotion Design Guardrails) | "The promo worked, so why are you clawing back?" |
| Customer support | Low handle time, CSAT, clear policies | Verification discipline; escalation of suspicious contacts; feedback on patterns | Training, macros, clear escalation paths (see Support Team Fraud Training) | Fraud holds generate contacts support can't resolve |
| Legal | Defensible terms, low litigation risk | Terms that allow holds, clawbacks and closures; guidance on notices and evidence | Facts, case records, clear rationale | Slow review; "we can't say that" |
| Compliance / BSA | Regulatory adherence, timely SARs | Clear referral standards; regulatory mapping | Timely, well-documented referrals (see BSA-AML and SAR Filing) | Fraud and AML duplicate work or miss handoffs |
| Finance | Accurate loss accounting, reserves, budget | Loss ledger reconciliation; reserve methodology; promo budgets | Loss forecasts, mechanism attribution (see Loss Taxonomy and Attribution) | Disagreement on what counts as a fraud loss |
| Security | Protect systems and data | Credential, bot and session-attack intel; incident coordination | Fraud signals that indicate compromise | Fraud vs security ownership of ATO |
| Payments / treasury | Rail economics, partner relationships | Rail rules, return codes, partner notices | Return and dispute rate management | Partner thresholds surprise fraud |
| Data / analytics | Clean data, clear definitions | Event data, warehouse access, shared definitions | Labels, metric definitions | Competing dashboards |
| Payment partners (processors, sponsor banks, networks) | Rule compliance, low loss and dispute rates | Monitoring program alerts, rule changes, data | Evidence of controls, incident cooperation | Surprise thresholds; audit requests |
| Retail / brand partners (rewards, offers) | Campaign performance, valid redemptions | Settlement data, offer terms, purchase validation | Abuse reporting, clean redemption data | Who pays for abused redemptions |
How to build it
Operating agreements
Write down, per partner, a short working agreement. Examples:
Product
- Every PRD has a "Fraud and abuse" section. A launch can't reach go/no-go without fraud sign-off for Tier 1–2 launches (see New Product and Promo Launch Review)
- Fraud commits to review turnaround targets by tier
- Product commits to logging requirements and kill switches as launch conditions
Growth / Marketing
- Promo briefs reach fraud at least N business days before launch
- Every promo has caps, vesting, clawback terms and a pause mechanism
- Promo performance is reported abuse-adjusted: net incremental customers after removing abusive redemptions
Support
- Verification protocols for account changes are mandatory and audited (see Customer Support Verification Protocols)
- Support has a fast escalation path to fraud for suspected social engineering
- Fraud publishes holding macros for every customer-facing fraud action
- Fraud attends support team meetings monthly to share patterns
Engineering
- A dedicated fraud engineering capacity (named people or a percentage of sprint capacity)
- Emergency deploys for fraud containment follow the incident process (see Fraud Incident Response)
- New money-movement events are logged with the agreed schema (see Fraud Data Architecture)
Finance
- One loss ledger, reconciled monthly
- An agreed taxonomy for fraud vs credit vs operational loss
- Promo budgets include an abuse reserve
Running the relationship
| Practice | How |
|---|---|
| Embed early | Fraud joins product planning as well as launch review |
| Speak their metric | Frame asks in conversion, CSAT, promo ROI or engineering effort alongside "fraud loss" |
| Offer options | Present three: block (max protection), hold or step-up (balanced), monitor (min friction), each with expected loss and friction |
| Share wins | Report loss avoided and friction removed. Credit partners. |
| Close the loop | When support escalates a case, tell them what happened |
| Be fast | A two-day review beats a perfect two-week review that product routes around |
The friction conversation
The partnership conversation that matters most is usually about the trade-off between loss and good-customer friction. Make it quantitative (see Friction and Customer Experience Tradeoffs):
- Express every proposed control as expected loss avoided and expected good customers affected × cost per affected customer
- Agree on who decides when the trade-off is close (see the decision rights in Fraud Operating Model)
- Revisit controls that have outlived the threat that justified them
Artifacts and templates
Partner RACI for common fraud decisions
| Decision | Product | Growth | Support | Legal | Compliance | Finance | Fraud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch a new payment / payout feature | A | C | C | C | C | R (conditions) | |
| Launch a promo | C | A | C | C (terms) | C (budget) | R (conditions) | |
| Pause a promo for abuse | I | C | I | I | A/R | ||
| Change account-change verification | C | R | C | C | A | ||
| Close accounts for fraud | I | I | C | C | A/R | ||
| Claw back rewards | I | C | I | C | I | A/R | |
| Report a SAR | C | A/R | R (referral) | ||||
| Set fraud loss reserve | A/R | C | |||||
| Customer reimbursement for scams | C | R | C | C | C | R (evidence) |
Monthly partner update outline
- Losses and trends relevant to their area
- Controls shipped and their impact (loss and friction)
- Upcoming changes that affect them
- Asks: what we need from them
- Open issues and owners
Promo abuse-adjusted ROI (for growth partners)
| Line | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gross redemptions | All promo payouts |
| Abusive redemptions | Confirmed or high-confidence abuse (multi-accounting, farms, self-referral) |
| Clawed back | Recovered |
| Net abuse cost | Abusive − clawed back |
| Net incremental customers | New customers retained at N days, excluding abusive accounts |
| Abuse-adjusted CAC | (Promo cost + net abuse cost) / net incremental customers |
Metrics
| Metric | Partner | Signals |
|---|---|---|
| Share of launches with fraud engaged before PRD finalization | Product | Early integration |
| Promo abuse rate and abuse-adjusted CAC | Growth | Promo health |
| Support escalations to fraud, and time to resolution | Support | Frontline partnership |
| Verification protocol adherence (QA) | Support | Control health |
| Fraud engineering lead time | Engineering | Capacity |
| Loss ledger reconciliation variance | Finance | Data trust |
| Partner alerts and threshold breaches | Payments partners | External standing |
| SAR referral timeliness | Compliance | Handoff health |
Pitfalls
- Fraud as the department of no. Partners start hiding launches.
- Unquantified asks. "This is risky" loses to "this will convert 3% better" every time. Bring numbers.
- Clawing back without warning growth. Surprises erode trust. Agree clawback rules before launch.
- Leaving support with no answers. Every fraud action that generates contacts needs a macro and an escalation path.
- Shadow fraud teams. When fraud is unresponsive, product and growth build their own "abuse checks", and they're ungoverned and inconsistent.
- Ignoring partner signals. Processor or sponsor-bank warnings often precede formal action. Treat them as incidents.
Related
- Fraud Program Overview · Fraud Operating Model · Three Lines of Defense · New Product and Promo Launch Review
- Friction and Customer Experience Tradeoffs · Support Team Fraud Training · Fraud Incident Response
- Card Network Dispute Rules · Nacha Rules and ACH Risk · Vendor Selection and Evaluation · Fraud Metrics and KPIs
Sources and further reading
- COSO/ACFE Fraud Risk Management Guide, 2nd ed., Executive Summary (2023): information and communication as a fraud risk principle, and coordinated investigation and corrective action across functions
- GAO-15-593SP Highlights: a dedicated antifraud entity with defined responsibilities and authority across the organization
- PRAC, Blueprint for Enhanced Program Integrity, Chapter 3: sharing fraud risk information across agencies, partners and law enforcement
- Nacha, Fraud Monitoring Phase 1: role-based ACH monitoring obligations that pull payments, treasury and fraud together