7 Best Financial Risk Management Software in 2023

Choosing the right fraud analysis tool can be one of the most important business decisions you make. It can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the wrong one could also cost you a lot in lost time, effort and headache.

So to ensure you’ve got all the right tools to beat fraudsters, we compiled a list of all the major fraud and risk management providers currently operating on the tech landscape. 

We’ll go over the pros and cons of each, and will hopefully help you pick the best one for your needs.

List of Top Financial Risk Management Software Solutions

• SEON: A Unique Take on Risk Management Software
• ArkOwl: Lightweight Email & Phone Analysis
• Emailage: Mature, Reliable End-to-End Platform
• Ekata: Ease of Use and Modular APIs
• TruValidate (Iovation): The iGaming Go-To
• Cybersource: Database-Powered Payments Powerhouse
• ThreatMetrix: Recognize Returning Customers

What Is Financial Risk Management Software?

These solutions protect the finances of an organization by providing a clear overview of threats to cash flows and revenue, as well as managing and mitigating them. 

In practice, every application or module that helps give information or make better decisions related to financial risk can fall under this category. These often have to do with approving transactions, disputing chargebacks, ensuring compliance, or onboarding new customers, for example. 

This umbrella term includes every tool that can serve organizations whose interactions with the public or with other businesses involve real-money transactions – in other words, almost every company out there. 

There are also tools for the finance and banking sector itself, which often target needs and pain points specific to the industry – for example, underwriting and credit scoring tools, payment approvals, and financial fraud prevention tools. 

How to Choose Financial Risk Management Software

There is really only one way to fight transaction fraud: acquiring more knowledge about your customers. But what you can do with it varies based on the kind of risk software you’re using:

• Data tools: These solutions let you aggregate more info based on a single point like an email address or phone number. Great for manual reviews, or for managers who just need extra insights. Some calculate a risk score, others simply deliver in raw form.
• End-to-end platform: You will get extra data and rules to calculate a risk score more efficiently. This gives you a lot more control and flexibility over how to mitigate risk. The most sophisticated platforms will use ML to help you discover new risk rules automatically.

Pricing Models & Hidden Costs

While all fraud companies operate under the SaaS model, you can also roughly group them based on how they charge:

• Chargeback guarantee: The provider will charge a percentage of the amount processed, and offer to cover the fees in case a chargeback request slips through the net.
• API or check based: You pay a micro fee every time the software checks an action. 

Chargeback guarantee models seem great because your business won’t have to deal with disputes any longer, but the vendor has a strong incentive to block more payments. This often results in more false positives, which could actually damage your bottom line in the long run.  On the other hand, for API or check-based calls, you only pay for what you use.

You will also want to consider how long it takes to integrate and deploy, the learning curve (which could result in several false positives and negatives at first), and whether there is unlimited customer support provided for free.

The 7 Best Financial Risk Management Software

SEON – Our Unique Take on Risk Management Software

SEON was started in 2017, by two business owners who couldn’t find the perfect anti-fraud solution. There were a number of important features we knew we wanted to deliver for our clients.

So, we designed an end-to-end fraud platform that efficiently addresses pain points and works transparently to protect transactions and revenue. There are also tools to provide invaluable insight for manual reviews, helpful presets, and flexible ways to integrate. Among these is the data enrichment module, which scours OSINT sources to create each customer’s digital footprint, complete with 50+ social and web platform signals – to help manual or automatic decision making.

Some of the features on offer include:

• Ease of integration: Our integration timeline is one of the shortest in the fraud tech world. The flexibility of the modular APIs also gives you plenty of control over how you connect SEON to other web apps.
• Outstanding UX: From full team management features to a Gmail-like transaction view, we understand that delivering a better experience for fraud teams translates directly into a better way to identify risks for business growth.
• Complete anti-fraud suite of tools: Advanced device fingerprinting, transaction monitoring, IP analysis, velocity checks and social media lookup solutions. SEON is also customizable enough to fit a number of industries by helping with AML and geo- compliance, chargebacks, account takeover, and bonus abuse, among others.
• Innovative features: Our Google Chrome extension for enrichment and messenger lookup, for instance, are pretty much unique on the market.
• Complete transparency: Our machine learning engine delivers rules in a human-readable format so that you always know how to best leverage them. We are also the only fraud tech company to deliver clear, transparent pricing along with a free trial.

Plus, we are always improving. Our online resources are constantly updated to deliver a fully self-serve approach, while the algorithms are updated to examine and take into account more data points, becoming ever more accurate.

SEON Pros

• Flexibility: SEON is fully modular, transparent and flexible, with easy-to-implement amendments to default rulesets and actioning.
• End-to-end solution: For those who choose to use it as such, the vendor can be a fully-fledged end-to-end fraud prevention, alternative data enrichment and customer insights solution.
• Unique digital footprinting: SEON does real-time social media and online platform data enrichment, offering accurate intel based on just an email address or phone number.

SEON Cons

• No on-site integration: Though SEON plays well with other software due to its modular APIs, there is no on-site integration for customers.
• No on-premise support: There’s no on-premise support available at the time of writing.

SEON Pricing

• Starts at $299 per month with a free version available. Book a live product demo to see how we can help your business.

Choose SEON If:

• You would like to take advantage of the real-time accuracy of digital footprint analysis to catch fraudsters and identify good users.

ArkOwl – Lightweight Email & Phone Analysis

ArkOwl provides live, accurate and rich analysis mainly for email and phone verification. This helps predict how risky a user will be before they process a payment on your site. Their analysis looks at the domain, breaches, and social networks, among others.

The tool counts 81+ points used for analysis and ensures data is delivered in raw form, with what they claim are no false positives or negatives. There are no limits on the number of users you can add to an account, as you only pay for the bandwidth you use. Payment is flexible either as a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go, and they offer a free trial.

When it comes to social media, it’s worth noting that ArkOwl looks at some of the main networks (Google, Facebook, Twitter), but the number of databases they can check is limited. This is certainly due to the fact that ArkOwl is a small team – and scraping social info can be extremely complex and time-consuming as the sites change their settings all the time.

ArkOwl Pros

• Lightweight: You get email and phone data enrichment with basic social media checks, but not that many features.
• Real-time: There is no stale data because all searches are in real-time, unlike companies that rely on databases.

ArkOwl Cons

• Limited documentation: It is a very small company, so there is not much online documentation.
• Not as many sources: ArkOwl uses a limited number of sites for social media profiling – for instance missing out on phone messenger lookups. Can’t help with more advanced attacks.

ArkOwl Pricing

• It’s pay-per-API-request pricing but you must contact sales for a quote.

Choose ArkOwl If:

• You have risk management software in place but would appreciate some extra knowledge points.

Emailage – Mature, Reliable End-to-End Platform

Now acquired by the tech corporation LexisNexis, Emailage delivers risk intelligence via email address analysis and predictive scores. The company has been operating for a long time, putting it in the category of mature, enterprise risk management software, but they nevertheless innovate with tools such as the Chrome extension.

When it comes to analysis, Emailage has a surprisingly low number of data points it analyzes in real-time, relying instead on proprietary databases they have built over the years. This can make it challenging to use effectively in certain emerging markets.

On the flip side, the dashboard is well-designed and there is no shortage of online resources thanks to webinars, good documentation, and 24/7 customer support, which could make it one of the best risk management software for enterprise clients.

Emailage Pros

• Lightweight: Emailage provides lightweight email and phone verification with basic social media checks for risk assessment.
• Integrates with LexisNexis: As part of the LexisNexis suite of products, which numbers dozens of quality solutions, Emailage integrates well with everything on their roster, such as ThreatMetrix.

Emailage Cons

• Missing fraud prevention: Emailage homes in on email intelligence but fraud prevention modules are offered separately by its parent company, LexisNexis. There is no device fingerprinting for extra analysis, preset rules, or permissions for team management.
• Pricey: Price per request is at the higher end of the spectrum, and support is a paid extra, so not recommended for SMEs.

Emailage Pricing

• Emailage uses pay-per-check pricing but the exact details are not available to the public.

Choose Emailage If:

• You are an enterprise with high budgets and local customers.

Ekata – Ease of Use and Modular APIs

Ekata leverages identity verification to validate customers and prevent risk. For analysis, it uses a tool called the Ekata Identity Graph. This acquires global data from other providers to see which users have been vetted, based on phone, address and email validation.

Here again, the lack of real-time data can be problematic and impact companies in international markets. Your defense strategy will need to be tweaked based on how much information the company’s databases already hold. 

The advantage is that you can use Ekata’s risk management software as a modular tool, by selecting their Transaction Risk, ID check, Data enrichment or Address Validation APIs. You can also use the Pro Insight tool, built especially for manual reviews.

Ekata Pros

• Ease of use: It is really easy to use for manual reviews.
• Modular: Ekata offers modular tools so you don’t have to integrate functionality that does not serve your needs.

Ekata Cons

• Lacks some functionality: Fraud prevention reports are fairly basic and don’t include critical social footprint checks. You won’t be able to perform KYC checks or plan to block advanced fraud attempts.

Ekata Pricing

• You will have to speak to the Ekata team to find out more about pricing.

Choose Ekata If:

• You have a small risk assessment team who would prefer to pick and choose features for a multi-layered security stack.

TruValidate (formerly Iovation) – The iGaming Go-To

If you’re in the iGaming industry, TransUnion TruValidate or, as it was once called, Iovation, is a risk management software leader. This is in part thanks to their proprietary device fingerprinting solution and a risk engine that supports some custom rules. 

Founded in 2004 and subsequently acquired by TransUnion, the solution has amassed a knowledge base of more than 10 billion unique devices from every country in the world, which can help block potential fraudsters who use the same browser.

The key complaints we hear from online review sites are that some unscrupulous iGaming companies use the product to mark their own customers as fraudsters, solely so other competitors won’t board them.

In terms of compliance, there are also concerns that the company cannot deliver the best data protection for its customers, which could impact your project’s compliance.

TruValidate Pros

• Powerful device fingerprinting: This vendor’s device fingerprinting is among the strongest and most comprehensive on the market.
• iGaming staple: TruValidate is a sure bet if you want to use the same engine as all other iGaming companies.

TruValidate Cons

• False positives: Historically known for false positives due to customers gaming the shared blacklists.
• No real-time digital footprint: There are no reverse email and phone lookup, which might not work for those who need advanced enrichment features for fraud prevention.

TruValidate Pricing

• Pay per API call. Must contact the sales team for a quote.

Choose TruValidate If:

• You are in the iGaming sector and want to work with someone with vast experience in the field.

Cybersource – Database-Powered Payments Powerhouse

Owned by Visa, Cybersource is a popular financial risk management software vendor. It was founded back in 1994 and has since amassed experience that led it to boast $691 billion in transactions in 2021.

From these, it has built an exclusive and extensive database of historical data that helps inform transaction-related decisions for their customers – such as when dealing with chargebacks, fraud and risk management, and payment security.

This risk management solution is flexible and multi-layered to better adapt to the needs of businesses of different sizes and with different needs. The vendor promises to reduce financial risk by targeting areas such as data security, fraud prevention, global tax compliance, and even currency conversion.

In line with this, Cybersource is marketed as a “global” solution, available across all locales and in every currency, to help organizations better manage financial risk. 

Cybersource Pros

• Payments focus: This comprehensive platform combines payment and risk management for PoS, phone and online payments. 
• Set and forget: Gives merchants peace of mind as it’s more of a set-and-forget solution than others, for those who don’t want to customize their approach as granularly.

Cybersource Cons

• Data is not live: The payment database data is based on historical data, so it could potentially be stale, especially compared to real-time solutions.

Cybersource Pricing

• The vendor uses a tier-based pricing model.

Choose Cybersource If:

• You’re a merchant who looking to safeguard orders taken online, over the phone and in person with an end-to-end platform.

ThreatMetrix – Recognize Returning Customers

Following its 2018 acquisition, ThreatMetrix continues to deliver innovative risk management and cybersecurity services with a focus on authenticating personas and transactions – now as part of the expansive family of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

The dynamic decision platform is a single portal that gives analysts a wealth of information to improve decision making, gathered through behavior analytics, fingerprinting, and IP analysis. In fact, ThreatMetrix claims to be able to “recognize up to 95% of returning customers” in milliseconds, doing away with friction.

The digital identity intelligence delivered by this financial risk management vendor allows for prioritizing workflow, and the machine learning employed is whitebox, providing context and reasoning along with the risk scores generated.

One caveat for those considering adding ThreatMetrix to their solution stack is that there are reports of integration issues when deployed alongside tools from other companies. There is also no free trial at present.

ThreatMetrix Pros

• Whitebox: Unlike many of its competitors, ThreatMetrix utilizes a whitebox machine learning approach, which means all decisioning is fully explainable.
• Reduce churn: Featuring a dynamic decision platform, the vendor places a focus on reducing churn.

ThreatMetrix Cons

• Tricky to integrate into a stack: ThreatMetrix does not integrate so well with solutions from other vendors.
• No customer intel: The type of data gathered about customers does not help with segmentation, as some vendors that offer data enrichment do.

ThreatMetrix Pricing

• ThreatMetrix operates a pay-per-transaction model. For more details, you’ll have to speak to the sales team.

Choose ThreatMetrix If:

• You want a full identity and authentication platform and already use other LexisNexis products.

Comparison Table of Financial Risk Management Solutions

Choosing the Best Financial Risk Assessment Tools for Transaction Fraud

The risk identification and fraud risk management landscape is fast evolving. Legacy giants continue to grow and acquire each other. Meanwhile, younger startups develop innovative solutions and target specific niche markets. Choosing the best solution depends on your business needs and priorities.

But at SEON, we are dedicated to creating the ultimate fraud monitoring tools. Not just to reduce chargebacks but also to combat bonus abuse, multi accounting, and to help with KYC processes and AML regulations.

Our goal was always to develop risk management software that was flexible, powerful and transparent enough to fit any industry and meet any challenges for risk managers head-on. We certainly find our clients are more than satisfied with what we’ve built so far, and we hope you’ll give our products a try too.

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