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Hope or hazard? Generative AI takes center stage for Fraud Week 2023

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As anti-fraud pros and organizations across industries unite around International Fraud Awareness Week, Nov. 12-18, SAS examines how the rise of generative AI will impact the global fraud landscape

CARY, N.C., Nov. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — As the sun rises on another International Fraud Awareness Week, Nov. 12-18, 2023, it shines on a world perhaps more fraud conscious than at any time in history. A recent consumer fraud study, based on a survey of 13,500 adults by AI and analytics leader SAS, revealed that:

Seven in 10 people have fallen victim to fraud at least once; 40% reported suffering fraud twice or more.A vast majority (86%) are more wary of fraud now compared to previously.Three-quarters are fearful of experiencing future fraud.

Experience the full interactive Multichannel News Release here: https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8827856-sas-international-fraud-awareness-week/ 

“Even as consumers signal increased fraud vigilance, generative AI and deepfake technology are helping fraudsters hone their lucrative craft,” said Stu Bradley, Senior Vice President of Risk, Fraud and Compliance at SAS. “Phishing messages are becoming more polished. Replica websites look stunningly like the ones they mean to imitate. It takes just $5 and a few seconds of audio to clone someone’s voice with readily available online tools.”

Turning the tide on fraudsters: ways to engage
With stakes so high, SAS is again joining forces with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and more than 1,000 supporting organizations around one goal: to curb fraud and its financial and social harms by driving anti-fraud awareness and education. Seize these complimentary opportunities to become more fraud savvy with SAS throughout Fraud Week:

SAS webinar: The Fraud Arms Race: How Governments and Fraudsters are Battling for Advantage. Tuesday, Nov. 14, 8:30 a.m. ET (and later on demand). Join public sector experts from SAS to explore how fraudsters are using generative AI and other innovations to exploit and plunder – and discover the latest countermeasures governments worldwide are using to stop them.Live Twitter/X chat: What’s Next? Fraud & AML Trends for 2024 (and Beyond). Thursday, Nov. 16, 9 a.m. ET. Will generative AI live up to the hype? How will today’s prevailing digital fraud trends influence the anti-fraud tools and strategies used in sectors like banking, government, health care and insurance? Join SAS’ Stu Bradley and other cross-industry fraud experts on Twitter/X for a lively #SASchat.ACFE webinar: Fighting Financial Crime in the Generative AI Age. Friday, Nov. 17, 11 a.m. ET. Open for the first time to ACFE members and nonmembers alike, the ACFE will align experts from SAS, Datos Insights and Unconventional Ventures to examine the threats posed by generative AI’s explosive growth – and how organizations can mitigate them. Nonmember participation is limited to the live broadcast (register here); the webinar will be available on demand to ACFE members starting Dec. 7.

Supporters can also lend their voices on social media to share fraud fighting tips and resources from SAS. Follow #FraudWeek on Twitter/X for real-world expertise and discussions on a variety of fraud topics, including global fraud trends, the impacts of generative AI (good and bad), digital and payments fraud, identity crime, claims fraud, tax compliance, social program integrity, health care fraud and cost containment, and more.

“Anti-fraud professionals can’t afford to ignore the scams and frauds coming to the fore in these challenging economic times – nor can the organizations that employ them afford to disregard the public’s changing expectations around fraud protection,” said ACFE President John Gill. “Keeping up with anti-fraud innovation will be critical across industries as fraudsters take advantage of generative AI and other emerging technologies.”

SAS’ research showed how important fraud protection has become to consumers. “Consider that nine in 10 consumers think organizations should be doing more to safeguard them from fraud, and that two-thirds said they would change service providers due to a fraud experience or for better fraud protection,” Bradley said. “These proof points – and the real-world gains achieved by SAS customers – underscore the tremendous potential of businesses’ anti-fraud investments to help them grow and flourish.”

Using AI to stop financial fraud in real time
Beyond serving as Italy’s national postal service, Poste Italiane is among the country’s leading financial institutions, providing banking, insurance and even telecommunications services to 35 million customers. Protecting the 11 million customers who interact with Poste Italiane each day from fraud, abuse and improper payments is a foremost priority for the 160-year-old institution. That’s why the company uses advanced analytics and AI from SAS to detect fraud more precisely.

“Machine learning techniques provide that layer of intelligence that allows us to identify risk situations, analyze them very quickly and intervene when necessary,” said Raffaele Panico, Head of Fraud Management and Security Intelligence at Poste Italiane. “We have reduced false positives by 40% and increased our ability to handle anomalies by more than 20%.”

On the e-money side, Panico reported that Poste Italiane’s fraud ratio dropped by 50% in just three months after the launch of the anti-fraud service. “This is an astonishing figure, especially when we consider that in the last two years fraud has increased by 90% worldwide,” said Panico.

Improving claims fraud detection with predictive analytics and real-time decisioning
Since 2016, HDI Seguros has collaborated with SAS to combat evolving fraud risks and improve the customer experience. Using SAS solutions, the Brazilian insurer has transformed its existing anti-fraud system in recent years with new predictive modeling and decisioning tools to better identify and mitigate shifting fraud threats in real time.

These ongoing anti-fraud modernizations have helped HDI reduce false positives while improving its fraud detection rates. The insurer reported a 43% increase in the number of frauds identified from 2021 to 2022.

“SAS brought technology that helped us analyze external and internal data for greater accuracy,” said Leandro Bordon, Director of Operations and Claims at HDI Seguros. “We are able to look at the relationship network of fraudsters and customers with more intelligence, as it involves the complex interconnection of several elements, such as location, contacts, credit score, damages reported in the claim and other information.”

Enhancing anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud surveillance capabilities
By deploying SAS® Anti-Money Laundering on cloud-native AI platform SAS® Viya®, Treezor enhanced its AML and fraud surveillance capabilities. The European Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) leader, based in Paris, operates in 25 countries, serving more than 100 fintech and large business customers. It has processed more than EUR€58 billion in transactions and issued more than 4.6 million payment cards.

Treezor deployed SAS Viya for monitoring transaction compliance, facilitating systematic coverage of anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) and fraud risks. All teams, from compliance managers to analysts, collaborate on the platform, benefiting from prioritized alerts, robust case management capabilities and audit trail precision.

“Treezor plays a pivotal role in AML/CFT vigilance by reinforcing its monitoring capabilities, offering security to its customers and their end customers,” said Adin Buhks, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at Treezor. “We are the first BaaS player to partner with SAS, who helped us implement a state-of-the-art solution in a tight time frame. Our AML analysts quickly adapted to the new solution, and the network capabilities are a game changer.”

Fighting tax evasion in freight transport
The Department of Economy of the State of Goiás in Brazil adopted SAS technology – SAS® Enterprise Guide® and SAS Visual Analytics on SAS Viya – to combat tax evasion in freight transport. The initiative uses monitoring and AI technologies to cross-check tax data in real time. Optical character recognition (OCR)-equipped antennas throughout the state’s highways enable the department to track roughly 30,000 cargo trucks daily.

Within a month of deployment, the system generated 300 alerts of possible tax inconsistencies each day. By better identifying irregularities – e.g., forged invoices, missing electronic manifests mandated for freight transport vehicles, and cargo exceeding declared quantity – the department increased fines by 54% compared to the same month last year.

“This project has greatly changed the department’s operational efficiency, bringing benefits to society and increased transparency for the department,” said Giovana Amorim Zanato, Manager of Prospecting and Auditing for the Department of Economy of the State of Goiás. “We combined SAS technology with other technologies to prevent tax evasion and created something innovative to serve as an example for other states’ departments.”

About SAS
SAS is a global leader in AI and analytics software, including industry-specific solutions. SAS helps organizations transform data into trusted decisions faster by providing knowledge in the moments that matter. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2023 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

Editorial Contact:
Danielle Bates
danielle.bates@sas.com  
919-531-1959
sas.com/news

 

 

 

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AmeriTrust Solutions Expands Point-of-Care Medicaid Application Support to All 50 States

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Available today, the platform gives hospitals and RCM partners a practical way to help eligible patients pursue coverage without a major IT project.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AmeriTrust Solutions today announced that its Medicaid application platform is available across all 50 U.S. states. As hospitals and revenue cycle management (RCM) partners prepare for Medicaid changes under H.R.1, the platform gives them a practical way to help eligible patients pursue coverage and address uncompensated care at the point of care.

The platform addresses a source of uncompensated care that begins before billing: patients who may qualify for Medicaid but never complete an application. By simplifying the process when the need for coverage is immediate, AmeriTrust Solutions helps patients overcome application barriers and gives hospitals a path to reimbursement for care that might otherwise be written off.

The scale of the problem is substantial: U.S. community hospitals provided $42.7 billion in uncompensated care in 2020, according to the American Hospital Association.

Uninsured encounters are often written off as uncompensated care, even when patients may qualify for Medicaid. Long applications, confusing questions and information patients struggle to gather can stand between them and coverage, leaving hospitals without payment for care that could otherwise qualify for reimbursement.

“Hospitals already know what uncompensated care is costing them,” said Peter Justen, founder and CEO of AmeriTrust Solutions. “They need a practical way to help eligible patients get covered and create a path to payment for the care they provide. That starts with an application patients can actually finish.”

AmeriTrust Solutions uses verified third-party data to prefill available information and plain-language questions to guide patients through what remains. Patients review and certify their information before submission through the state’s existing process. The state makes every eligibility decision.

Available today, the platform is designed for straightforward deployment alongside existing hospital workflows, without a major IT project or replacement of state eligibility systems. Hospitals can begin submitting applications as soon as the platform is live, creating the potential for Medicaid reimbursement within weeks, depending on state eligibility decisions and claims processing. Hospitals can offer the experience under their own brand, giving existing teams a straightforward way to help patients complete applications at intake or the bedside.

RCM partners can add this capability to their hospital offering without developing Medicaid application technology internally. That gives them another way to support hospital clients serving uninsured and self-pay patients, with a focus on helping more applications reach submission.

As healthcare organizations evaluate AI and other new technologies, AmeriTrust Solutions puts the emphasis on a clear, guided application process and the value it can deliver. The platform uses verified information, relevant questions and applicant review to make a complex administrative task more manageable.

“The questions hospital leaders are asking are straightforward: What will this do for us, and how soon can we put it to work?” Justen said. “Our focus is helping patients complete applications now, so hospitals can begin addressing the coverage gaps that contribute to uncompensated care.”

Hospitals and RCM partners can learn more about the platform and discuss deployment at ameritrustsolutions.com/.

About AmeriTrust Solutions
AmeriTrust Solutions helps hospitals and RCM partners reduce uncompensated care by simplifying Medicaid applications at the point of care. Verified data prefill and guided questions help patients complete more accurate applications for submission through existing state eligibility processes. By reducing administrative burden and helping eligible patients access coverage, the company creates a clearer path to reimbursement—supporting rural hospital financial stability and helping preserve local access to care. Visit https://ameritrustsolutions.com/

Media contact
Tina Burgess
AmeriTrust Solutions
(202) 770-0272
pr@ameritrustsolutions.com

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University of Phoenix highlights career-focused, transfer credit-friendly degree programs

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University data highlights affordability as students apply transfer credits toward business, management, healthcare, technology and other career-focused degree programs while reducing education costs

PHOENIX, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — University of Phoenix is recognizing National Transfer Student Week by highlighting the degree programs receiving the highest volumes of transfer credits, demonstrating how adult learners are benefiting from affordability, transparency and certainty as they apply previously earned academic credit toward career-focused degrees. Many of these programs align with occupational fields projected for growth by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, underscoring how students are building on prior academic achievements while pursuing educational pathways connected to workforce needs.

According to University transfer-credit data for the past year, students applied more than 525,000 accepted transfer credits to the Bachelor of Science in Management program and more than 275,000 accepted transfer credits to the Bachelor of Science in Business program. University data also shows associate and bachelor students saved an average of more than $12,010 through transferred credits, excluding military students, underscoring the role transfer pathways can play in making higher education more affordable.

“Transfer credit can help students do more than save time and money,” said Devin Andrews, vice president, Office of Admissions and Evaluations. “It can help them continue making progress toward degrees that align with their professional goals. By recognizing eligible transfer credit, we help students build on what they have already accomplished and focus on the education and skills needed for the next phase of their careers.”

As University of Phoenix celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2026, the institution is reflecting five decades of helping working adults build on previous academic achievement and professional experience rather than start over. Today, transfer-credit pathways remain an important part of that mission, helping eligible students reduce costs while pursuing degrees aligned with career goals.

Students apply transfer credits across career-focused degree programs

University transfer-credit data shows students are applying significant volumes of transfer credit toward degree programs aligned with business, management, healthcare, public service and technology careers.

Programs receiving the highest volumes of accepted transfer credits include:

Bachelor of Science in Management: 525,085 accepted transfer credits and 447,622 applied transfer credits.Bachelor of Science in Business: 275,745 accepted transfer credits and 243,281 applied transfer credits.Bachelor of Science in Health Administration: 165,159 accepted transfer credits.Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice Administration: 159,810 accepted transfer credits and 139,898 applied transfer credits.Bachelor of Science in Information Technology: 140,604 accepted transfer credits.Bachelor of Science in Social Work: 135,583 accepted transfer credits.

These programs represent areas where students are frequently building on previously earned academic credits as they continue toward degree completion and career goals.

University of Phoenix transfer student Joshua Barron decided to earn his degree while working full time and raising his child. “I have always had a goal of earning my bachelor’s degree,” said Barron, who came to the University with previous college credit. “I transferred credits from another college and used self-paced provider options to accelerate my progress. What started as a goal became a clear path toward achieving the degree I wanted for my future.”

Affordable degree pathways align with growing workforce needs

Several of the University’s most popular transfer-friendly programs align with occupations projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to experience faster-than-average employment growth through 2034. Management occupations, Healthcare occupations, and Information Technology occupations all fall into high-growth categories according to BLS projections.

Learn more about transfer-credit opportunities

Students interested in learning how previously earned credits may apply toward a degree program can learn more here.

About University of Phoenix

University of Phoenix is Built for Real Life. 50 Years Strong. The University innovates to help working adults enhance their careers and develop skills in a rapidly changing world through flexible online learning, relevant courses, academic AI pillars, and skills-mapped curriculum for associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Active students and alumni have access to Career Services for Life® resources including career guidance and tools. For more information, visit phoenix.edu.

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/C O R R E C T I O N – Verisave/

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In the news release, Verisave appoints Payments Veteran Chris Lefebvre as Chief Executive Officer to Drive Product Development and Growth, issued 22-Oct-2026 by Verisave over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that changes have been made. The complete, corrected release follows, with additional details at the end:

Verisave appoints Payments Veteran Chris Lefebvre as Chief Executive Officer to Drive Product Development and Growth

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Verisave, a leading provider of payments optimization solutions, today announced the appointment of Chris Lefebvre as Chief Executive Officer, effective October 1, 2026. Lefebvre, who joins from Fiserv, succeeds Jeremy Layton, who will transition into the role of Founder and Chief Commercial Officer to ensure strategic continuity.

Lefebvre brings more than 30 years of executive leadership across payments, financial services and technology, with a track record of guiding companies through growth, transformation and successful exits. He led financial services for a major retailer and was selected to serve on the Merchant Advisory Board for the card networks. As COO of BankServ, he led the company’s national expansion and its successful exit. Lefebvre has since held C-suite roles at eCommerce sales and marketing companies, after which he founded CRC, a management and strategy consulting firm serving regulated companies in healthcare, energy and financial services. Most recently, he served as Global Head of Relationship Management for Grocery, Petroleum, and Technology at Fiserv, and was instrumental in reshaping their client engagement strategy.

“I am extremely proud of the work Verisave has done over the years,” said Jeremy Layton, Verisave Founder and Chief Commercial Officer. “I am confident in our ability to continue bringing solutions and transparency to an industry that is largely unregulated and highly complex. Our clients increasingly need better solutions to control costs and manage their payments proactively. Chris brings deep payments expertise and a track record of building products and solutions around this need.”

“Verisave has built something rare: a trusted platform that delivers real and measurable value for its clients,” said Chris Lefebvre. “What drew me to the role is how much opportunity lies ahead, both in deepening our core solutions and expanding our reach across the broader financial ecosystem. I’m energized by the prospect of working with such a talented team as we look to accelerate Verisave’s growth and bring even greater value to our clients.”

About Verisave
Verisave is a payments optimization and consultancy firm, specializing in merchant account, payments stack, processing fee, and interchange fee solutions. Verisave identifies wasted spend and inefficiencies within the payments operations and merchant account settings, bringing significant direct and operational cost savings to clients. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, the company is backed by Ceto Capital. Learn more at verisave.com

Media Contact:
Samuel Barber
sam@pitchr.ai

Correction: A headshot of Chris Lefebvre has been added.

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