Michigan State University Federal Credit Union Cuts Authentication Time in Half with Pindrop

Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU), a forward-thinking, member-first organization, wanted to modernize member authentication as part of a broader transformation focused on improving the member experience. MSUFCU also wanted to stay ahead of evolving fraud trends with advanced fraud and deepfake detection capabilities.

Using Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport within its Five9 contact center enviornment, MSUFCU, an 86-year-old organization with 7.7 billion in assets, reduced average member authentication time by 50% (from 90 seconds to 45 seconds) in 90 days. Pindrop® solutions streamlined call handling by enabling agents authenticate members more quickly while also providing enhanced fraud investigation capabilities to improve case management efficiency.

With Pindrop® Passport, MSUFCU reduced average member authentication time by 50%, from 90 seconds to 45 seconds, within the first three months of implementation. For more than 40% of calls that achieved a full profile match, authentication time fell to just 12 seconds, a 78-second reduction.

Pindrop® Protect also gave MSUFCU a more efficient way to manage fraud alerts, providing agents with the data and insights needed to investigate fraud cases and improve case management efficiency.

‍

About the Credit Union

MSUFCU was established in 1937 to provide a safe place where members could borrow and save money. For the past 86 years, MSUFCU has built strong relationships with its members. The credit union serves important life goals of its members, such as helping them purchase their first car, home, or saving for their children’s education.

As a member-owned and governed financial cooperative with $7.7B in assets, +360k members, and 1,300 employees across 32 locations, MSUFCU is driven to provide superior experience and financial security to its members. They recently undertook a digital transformation initiative to convert their member service technology stack -including the phone channel- to the Cloud to better serve their members. MSUFCU reached out to Pindrop for help with modernizing their member identity verification process as part of transformation, and to help ensure safety of their members from the rising threat of external fraud.

Challenges

Member experience

As MSUFCU was in the early stages of its implementation with Five9, it was also looking at member experience as an opportunity for improvement. Members, as well as employees, felt that there was an opportunity to make the authentication process run more smoothly. For example, members felt that they were being asked too many questions to prove their identity, while the employees (agents) felt that this high-friction process adversely impacted their relationship with members, making it difficult to offer them new products and services. Beyond this friction, contact center employees felt that they were being asked to identify red flags and risks in those member interactions, a task for which they were not fully equipped.

Proactive fraud detection

The credit union also identified contact center fraud detection as an area where they needed new and better technology to strengthen their organization’s overall security posture. Contact centers are under threat from potential fraudsters, with a 60% increase in fraud attacks between 2021–23. Credit unions in particular have seen a sharper increase in fraud, with a 71% increase during the same period. MSUFCU was aware of these threats and wanted to enhance protection for their contact centers. Account reconnaissance was also an area of concern. The MSUFCU fraud team wanted to increase their fraud detection and case investigation efficiency to deal with fraud alerts more effectively. Lastly, the credit union wanted to empower call center agents with automated processes, including tools and technology to identify at-risk interactions without impacting their ability to serve trusted members.

Goals

MSUFCU had three goals as it sought a new solution:

1. Improve member experience via frictionless, real-time authentication
2. Reduce voice and cross-channel fraud without adding friction to the member experience or burdening employees with additional work
3. Reduce costs by increasing operational efficiencies

With these goals in mind, MSUFCU wanted to evolve its approach to fraud detection and member authentication for the future, proactively detecting and mitigating fraud activity rather than reacting to events on a passive, case-by-case basis, and ensuring that its fraud defenses were ready for future threats like deepfakes. They also sought a solution that enabled expanded self-service options for members in the future.

Before Pindrop® solutions

MSUFCU started modernizing their technology infrastructure by migrating to the Five9 Cloud Contact Center. As part of this migration, an important question was how to modernize the member authentication experience alongside this transformation.

Dated Processes were Impacting Customer Satisfaction and Agent Productivity. In the current process, agents verified members by asking common security questions like the members' name or account number, or asked them to repeat security phrases. The agents also had the flexibility to ask members about recent transactions or “out of wallet” questions, which are questions outside of the usual identification points like account numbers or SSNs that are meant to be known only to the intended users.  However, agents struggled to ask good questions that gave confidence in the member’s identity, and the members themselves were unhappy about being asked so many questions. The current authentication process was not only hurting member satisfaction, but also affecting agent productivity. With shorter average tenure of the call center staff, there was a growing cost to train new staff. Every additional minute spent by the agents on the phone due to longer authentication time was further adding to this cost.

Call duration increased by 40%

The average call duration at the credit union had increased to 8:30 minutes, up from 6 minutes four years ago. Of that, 90 seconds was typically spent on member authentication. The lack of visibility in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) was also costing MSUFCU the opportunity to increase self-service and reduce agent handled calls.

Fraud risk continued to grow

Despite increasing handle times, the security team was concerned about the growing risk of fraud, both in the contact center and at the organizational level. For example, MSUFCU teams had observed instances of fraudsters performing reconnaissance in self-service channels, such as asking general questions about the credit union’s processes. The team found that fraudsters had gathered considerable information about the fraud department team, as well as how the credit union functioned.

Deepfakes were also top of mind for MSUFCU as they prepared for a future “fraud-ready” state. According to Pindrop customer data, more than 200,000 synthetic calls were found among 21 million agent-handled calls analyzed in just 30 days of tracking, demonstrating a growing problem. With the rise of generative artificial intelligence and advanced text-to-speech systems, synthetic audio has also become more realistic, cost-effective, and scalable.¹

Such a high level of synthetic call activity poses a significant fraud risk to contact centers and teams. MSUFCU wanted a solution at the forefront of combating the threat of deepfakes.

Why Pindrop

Pindrop has been an integral part of the Company’s pioneering efforts in the insurance industry at a point in time when technology was not widely used to assess risk or identity proof and authenticate customers. More importantly, Pindrop has enabled the Company to prevent millions of dollars in fraud, provide industry-leading security, and optimize the customer experience.

Pindrop is leading the charge on deepfake fraud

MSUFCU chose Pindrop because of its single platform for both fraud detection and authentication, as well as its leadership in deepfake detection.

"Pindrop just seemed to be more forward-thinking than the other vendors we looked at. Their work surrounding deepfakes was considerable, they were leading the charge."- Colleen Cole, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU

Passive, multifactor authentication

Another factor that helped seal the deal for MSUFCU was Pindrop’s passive, multi-factor authentication solution, Passport. During its cloud transformation, MSUFCU wanted to adopt and leverage voice analysis to improve its authentication process without requiring members to enroll or authenticate by saying, “My voice is my password.” After evaluating other vendors, MSUFCU chose Pindrop for its frictionless, passive authentication system, which aligned with its forward-looking fraud strategy.

The credit union also found Pindrop’s seamless implementation, advisory, and project management expertise to be a strong differentiator. For example, MSUFCU wanted a partner that could fit into its agent desktop user interface (UI) experience, and Pindrop’s agent desktop integration with the credit union’s cloud provider was exactly what it was looking for. According to MSUFCU, Pindrop was incredibly knowledgeable in shaping and building the workflows it needed.

“We really appreciated the knowledge, expertise, and guidance that the Pindrop team brought to every interaction. Their team was phenomenal in meeting every deadline.”- Colleen Cole, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU

The right partner to help reduce expensive, manual authentication

MSUFCU found Pindrop to be the right partner to help with the evolution of its member authentication processes. After streamlining the agent-led authentication process, the credit union plans to encourage members to utilize more self-service options through its Five9 IVA. MSUFCU sees a lot of potential in conversational AI technologies to drive an increase in member self-service, and it plans to use Pindrop authentication to confidently support more transactions in the IVA.

Why did the credit union go with Pindrop?

• Technology and industry leadership in deepfake detection solutions
• Passive, frictionless authentication technology
• Strong operational, project management and industry expertise

What ROA did Pindrop® Solutions deliver?

Since deploying Pindrop’s fully integrated authentication and fraud detection solution, MSUFCU has seen measurable improvements in authentication efficiency, fraud call handling and investigation, and the member experience. The credit union significantly reduced average handle time while improving its ability to manage and investigate potential fraud.

“On the very first day, one of our agents shared that the calls ‘felt so much better.”- Colleen Cole, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU

Launched in August 2024

After deploying Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport, MSUFCU experienced significant benefits in member authentication, service satisfaction, and fraud detection. MSUFCU’s members are no longer required to answer lengthy questions. Pindrop solutions reduced the average member authentication time by 50%, from 90 seconds to 45 seconds. For 40% of calls that had a full caller profile match, Pindrop helped reduce authentication time from 90 seconds to 12 seconds (an 86.67% reduction). Even without a profile match, MSUFCU was able to reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) by 38 seconds using risk-based authentication from Pindrop.

This reduction helped contribute to an increase in member satisfaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Effort scores (how easy members find it to accomplish what they need). The overall satisfaction rating grew from 4.47 to 4.56 from August 2024 to September 2024, two months after implementing the Pindrop solution. NPS rose from 55 to 63 during the same period, and the Effort score grew from 4.13 to 4.26. These scores have also been sustained in the following months, with NPS reaching 65. Improved authentication has not only helped MSUFCU improve member satisfaction but has also contributed to an estimated $561,600 reduction in annualized operational costs by lowering average call handle time.

Additionally, the credit union’s agent experience improved. By leveraging low-risk signals from Pindrop solutions, the credit union was able to remove 20 seconds from average handle time during the authentication process within four hours of going live, which helped open up time for agents to focus on their core activity of helping members.

“An agent said on the very first day that the calls felt so much better, which allowed them to offer more products and services to members. That's a huge thing, both for what our members need and for the organization”. - Collen Pitmon, VP of Call Center, MSUFCU

Since the deployment of Pindrop Protect, the credit union has experienced improved visibility into fraud activity and a superior workflow for managing its fraud investigations. With the help of Protect, MSUFCU discovered that the fraud rate in its contact center was 1 in 1,900 calls (vs. an industry average of 1 in 976 calls). Previously, the credit union received fraud alerts from the call center, but it had limited access to data to understand the nuances of the fraud, which hindered investigation efficiency. The Pindrop fraud detection platform provided a great user experience, with configuration flexibility and drop-down menus, for the fraud investigation team to manage cases and navigate a fraud call.

“The data is all there. Overall, the biggest win for us is just the efficiency gains in terms of navigating our investigations.” - Jamie Smathers, VP of Fraud Prevention, MSUFCU

With the deployment of Pindrop Passport, MSUFCU authenticated 49,907 calls in October 2024, of which 19,129 calls were authenticated with a full profile match rate of 88.41% and 30,778 calls were authenticated with Low Risk Policies, for an overall authentication rate of 92.99%. Within just a one-week period, Pindrop Protect alerted MSUFCU to inbound fraud calls, protecting accounts with over $500K in total funds at risk.