Fraud is big business, costing the global economy an estimated US $5 trillion per annum, according to a report by Crowe and the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies. It is a problem no one can afford to ignore, as businesses and consumers struggle with the direct cost and associated disruption to economic life. Most worryingly, the incidence of fraud has increased as a result of mass digital adoption during COVID-19. This Viewpoint explains why a business-as-usual approach to managing fraud simply won’t do.

The international carrier industry has not brought much satisfaction over the past years. Traditional international carrier products are suffering low growth or are in structural decline, while service and asset innovators emerging in the adjacencies are making a mark in value creation. Telecom groups could have captured those trends through their international wholesale departments or subsidiaries, but their potential as trend hunters has been hindered by fragmentation or missing purpose.

The cloud is the playing field of the digital economy. However, most financial services companies have only been able to scratch the surface. Working within its existing operating practices and vendor ecosystem, it seems impossible to look beyond the lowest-hanging fruit. We make the case that it is time to try something new.

In the recent past, information technologies operated in static infrastructure silos. However, mass adoption of the cloud delivery model has irreversibly changed enterprises’ expectations of how IT infrastructure services should be built, provisioned and priced.