Poste Italiane’s new Fraud Prevention Centre was inaugurated today in Rome by the Chairperson Maria Bianca Farina, the CEO of Poste Italiane Matteo Del Fante and the Co-General Manager Giuseppe Lasco in the presence of the President of the National Anti-corruption Authority, Giuseppe Busia, the Chief of General Staff of the Guardia di Finanza, General of the Army Corps, Francesco Greco, the General Director of State Police Special Operations, Daniela Stradiotto, the Director of the Postal Police, Ivano Gabrielli, the Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit for Italy, Enzo Serata, and Authorities and officials of the Bank of Italy.
The duties of the Fraud Prevention Centre
Poste Italiane’s Fraud Prevention Centre monitors, 24 hours a day, the security of transactions carried out in the more than 12,800 Post Offices across the country and online, through payment cards, e-Commerce transactions and those of the Poste Vita insurance branch. More than 100 specialists are employed at the centre, with long experience in the field of financial and cyber security, together with young graduates selected from top Italian universities. In support of the specialists who govern the entire control process, from prevention to the management of suspicious transactions, the Centre adopts the most advanced technologies in Fraud Management and Fraud Intelligence to further raise the level of security of the financial activities of the entire Group and strengthen the tools to protect citizens against malfeasance and fraud.
Del Fante’s statement
“With the new Fraud Prevention Centre, Poste Italiane strengthens its tools for combating attempted wrongdoing and further enhances its anti-fraud response, thus making security a value that protects citizens,” said Poste Italiane CEO Matteo Del Fante. “The Centre is an example of Poste Italiane’s innovative capacity also in the field of security because it adopts a very effective integrated operating model that has increased our capacity for prevention in the face of the growing number of physical and digital transactions that take place each year between Poste Italiane’s different business areas.”
Lasco’s words
“The Centre is a new milestone in the security culture of the Poste Italiane Group, both to protect the company and the citizens who perform financial transactions every day in Post Offices or online, and whom we protect against the threats of increasingly aggressive criminality,” commented Poste Italiane’s Co-General Manager, Giuseppe Lasco. “We are the only organisation in Italy to have set up a centre of this level, one of the most advanced in Europe, and the only one to have fully internalised skills and resources to combat fraud on physical and digital payment systems. The presence among the specialists of young, talented recent graduates that Poste has carefully selected and trained to contribute their skills to the work of one of the most important security platforms in the country is a source of great pride.”
The numbers
In 2022, specialists at the Fraud Prevention Centre handled more than 1 million reports, foiling fraud attempts worth around €50 million. In the payment card segment, in particular, preventative action made it possible to reduce the incidence of fraudulent events against Poste Italiane customers by 50%, amounting to 0.0015% of the total, in contrast to the 90% increase recorded during the same period worldwide. With regard to checks on Poste Vita’s activities, in the first months of 2023 the Prevention Centre successfully dealt with 6,200 cases, foiling frauds for high values. Every year, with its 35 million customers, more than 20 million of whom have digital interactions via web and app, Poste Italiane handles around 2.5 billion transactions, worth around €200 billion. The company also holds around 10% of the acquiring market in Italy with almost 5 million physical and virtual POS.
