Are your fraud teams ready for 2026?

Fraud is increasing in scale, speed and complexity.

Because of this, organisations are evaluating their readiness not by the tools they own, but by the data, speed and intelligence they can operationalise.

Here's a readiness checklist for 2026:

1. Have you identified and mapped data silos?

If data sits in multiple systems without correlation, fraud teams operate with blind spots.

2. Can you ingest and analyse data in real time?

If ingestion is slow, detection will always lag behind attackers.

3. Do analysts have a unified view of fraud data?

Context must be available instantly — not assembled manually.

4. Are you reducing false positives year-on-year?

If not, operational efficiency will stagnate.

5. Is your architecture composable?

Can it support fraud, AML, cyber and identity use cases together?

6. Can your models access all relevant data?

Machine learning is only as good as the data it can reach.

7. Are investigations getting faster — or slower?

Investigation time is a leading indicator of operational maturity.

8. Do you have visibility across entities, not just events?

Fraud rings are discovered through relationships, not isolated alerts.

9. Is your fraud stack scalable for 2026 transaction volumes?

Growth without scalability creates risk.

10. Can you quantify fraud-programme ROI?

Boards increasingly expect it.

Fraud teams that modernise their data, search and analytics foundations will enter 2026 prepared for the new wave of synthetic identities, AI-driven scams, and multi-channel fraud operations. Those who don’t will spend the year catching up.