Synovus Prioritizes Fraud Protection with Carefull

In an increasingly digital world, financial institutions are facing a growing challenge: the escalating threat of fraud. According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers lost an estimated $158.3 billion to fraud in the U.S. in 2023, highlighting the urgent need for robust security measures. Synovus, a regional bank with a $7.3 billion market cap, has taken a strategic step to combat this issue by partnering with Carefull, a financial safety platform designed to protect aging adults, their families, and financial institutions from elder fraud, scams, and money mistakes.

The partnership with Carefull allows Synovus to offer its clients a comprehensive suite of account protection services, including proactive monitoring of bank, credit card, and investment accounts for suspicious patterns, fraud indicators, and common money mistakes. The service also provides identity and home title monitoring, credit monitoring, and a secure digital vault for storing critical documents and passwords. A key feature of the Carefull platform is the Trusted Contacts function, which enables family members to participate in account monitoring, particularly beneficial for older adults who hold 65% of U.S. deposits and are frequent targets of scams.

Approximately 75% of Carefull users engage family members in the platform, enhancing fraud detection capabilities while strengthening multigenerational banking relationships. This focus on multigenerational relationships is a strategic move for Synovus, as it addresses a critical vulnerability for regional banks that often lose younger family members to national competitors. By protecting these high-value deposits and creating touchpoints with potential inheritors of this wealth, Synovus is executing a sophisticated defensive strategy that could significantly improve customer retention economics.

From an operational perspective, this initiative likely offers favorable economics. Fraud-related customer service calls are among the most expensive to handle, often requiring extensive investigation and remediation. By preventing fraud proactively, Synovus can potentially reduce these high-cost interactions while simultaneously improving customer satisfaction metrics. For investors, this represents a thoughtful approach to deposit retention in a challenging environment, as the potential reduction in customer churn and fraud-related losses could meaningfully contribute to earnings stability.

In conclusion, Synovus's partnership with Carefull is a strategic defensive maneuver in the increasingly critical battleground of financial security. By focusing on fraud protection and multigenerational banking relationships, Synovus is addressing immediate financial protection needs and longer-term customer retention challenges. This initiative not only enhances the bank's competitive position against larger institutions and fintech disruptors but also offers favorable economics and improved customer satisfaction metrics. As regional banks face intense competition, Synovus's proactive approach to fraud protection sets it apart and strengthens its commitment to delivering value for its clients.