Fraud isn’t slowing down and neither are the fraudsters behind it. In Informativ’s recent webinar, our team walked businesses through the six biggest warning signs threatening credit operations right now and showed exactly how to turn each one into a competitive advantage.
Here’s what every credit-issuing business needs to know.
Warning Sign #1: Fraud Is Surging, and the Numbers Are Staggering
If you think fraud is someone else’s problem, consider this: businesses lost an estimated $534 billion to fraud in 2025 — a 46% increase over 2024, according to TransUnion’s H2 2025 Top Fraud Trends Report. American consumers alone lost over $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25% jump from the prior year, per the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network data.
AI is accelerating the problem. Fraudsters now use AI-powered tools to generate synthetic identities, forge documents, and bypass traditional verification methods faster than most businesses can respond. The threat isn’t hypothetical. It’s already in your pipeline.
What Is Synthetic Fraud — and Why Is It Growing So Fast?
Synthetic identity fraud is the fastest-growing fraud threat in consumer finance. Unlike traditional identity theft, which takes a real person’s stolen information, synthetic fraud combines a real data, such as a Social Security number, with a fabricated name and address to create a fictitious identity. This fake person then builds credit history and eventually maxes out every account before disappearing.
The exposure from synthetic fraud across American businesses totaled $3.3 billion at the end of 2024 — a 3% increase from the prior year — according to TransUnion’s H1 2025 State of Omnichannel Fraud Report.
Informativ’s fraud detection technology is specifically built to flag synthetic identities, identifying when a Social Security number doesn’t match the name and address on a credit application, before the deal is done.
Warning Sign #2: Document Fraud Has Surged 244% in One Year
Document fraud, which is the use of false, altered, or stolen documents to misrepresent identity, income, employment, or residence, has exploded. According to Entrust’s 2025 Identity Fraud Report, digital document forgeries increased 244% year-over-year in 2024. For the first time, digital forgeries surpassed physical counterfeits as the leading method of document fraud globally.
The tools to commit it are frighteningly accessible. Fake pay stub generators are a Google search away. Fraudsters can print a convincing income statement, hand it to a lender, and the deal gets processed before anyone verifies the source. By the time the bank calls to confirm employment, it’s too late.
How Informativ’s Verified Stips Stop Document Fraud Cold
Informativ’s Verified Stips solution, powered by TurboPass, verifies income, residence, and employment in real time pulling data directly from the source. If a consumer lost their job the day before applying, Verified Stips shows it instantly. There’s no window for a fake pay stub to survive.
This removes the guesswork from income verification and gives businesses a legally defensible record before the deal ever closes.
Warning Sign #3: Customer Friction vs. Fraud Prevention: You Don’t Have to Choose
Fraud prevention shouldn’t come at the cost of the customer experience. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends Report, more than 60% of customers will switch to a competitor after just one bad experience. A clunky, friction-heavy credit application process is enough to send a good customer elsewhere.
Informativ’s approach: use soft pulls for pre-qualification. Soft pulls don’t require a Social Security number, don’t impact the consumer’s credit score, and carry no compliance obligation (no adverse action notice, no risk-based pricing disclosure). Consumers can shop without penalty, and businesses can pre-qualify them without friction.
A January 2024 TransUnion global study found that 55% of U.S. consumers who monitor their credit do so with a near-term goal of opening a new credit account because they value the ability to shop and plan without damaging their score. Meeting customers where they are isn’t just good service. It converts.
Warning Sign #4: You’re Not Getting the Full Picture from Credit Scores
Credit scoring isn’t one-size-fits-all, and businesses that treat it that way are leaving information on the table.
FICO, derived by Fair Isaac and Company, is used by most lenders and ranges from 300–850. VantageScore, derived by Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, uses a similar range and is increasingly a relevant option for businesses looking to manage credit data costs.
In a previous Informativ webinar, 76% of attendees said that reading and understanding credit reports was the biggest challenge their business faces. Knowing the score is only the start.
What to Actually Look for in a Credit Report
A credit score alone doesn’t tell the full story. Informativ’s credit reporting software surfaces the full picture:
- Decision factors — bankruptcies, repossessions, monthly income at a glance
- Personal information — verify that the name, address, and other details match the credit application exactly
- Employment data — company name, date of hire, income listed from bureau data
- Report summary — total trades, current accounts, 30/60-day past due accounts, account balances
- Liens and judgments — immediately visible if present
- Trade lines — full account history, credit limits, balances, and payment status
- Inquiries and warning messages — too many recent inquiries across multiple industries is a red flag; warnings may include address alerts, “call consumer before releasing credit,” or a frozen file notice
Informativ also provides Red Flag compliance alerts directly within the credit report. A green flag means the consumer’s information passes all checks. A red flag means something requires additional verification.
Warning Sign #5: Compliance Gaps Are Hidden Liabilities
In a previous Informativ webinar, 57% of attendees said they were unsure about credit compliance requirements. That uncertainty is expensive.
Here’s what’s required and what’s not:
Soft pulls: No adverse action notice required. No risk-based pricing disclosure required. Long-term storage of credit applications is still required.
Hard pulls: Adverse action notices and risk-based pricing disclosure notices are both required. Long-term storage is required.
Informativ’s compliance dashboard keeps all of this organized (credit applications, compliance records, and audit history) and stored in one place. OFAC checks, Red Flag identity fraud detection, synthetic ID detection, driver’s license verification, and knowledge-based authentication questions are all built into the workflow.
What compliance gaps actually cost: Every gap in your process is a liability. Informativ helps businesses close those gaps before an audit or a lawsuit finds them first.
Warning Sign #6: Your Website Is Losing Applicants Before They Even Start
If your website is losing credit applicants before they complete the process, Informativ can fix that too.
Informativ’s instant form fill requires just four fields to initiate a full credit application. The system automatically populates the remaining application data from bureau records, eliminating manual entry, reducing abandonment, and keeping visitors on-site longer. It integrates with CRMs and loan origination systems and replaces paper applications with a seamless digital process.
The result: faster applications, faster approvals, and higher conversion without cutting corners on compliance.
What Every Business Should Walk Away With
The warning signs are real: fraud is surging, document forgery is cheap and accessible, compliance requirements are non-negotiable, and customer experience expectations are rising. But every one of these risks has a solution.
Informativ gives businesses the tools to detect fraud before it reaches funding, verify income and employment in real time, understand and act on full credit report data, stay compliant without slowing the process, and convert more applicants from the first touchpoint.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Synthetic identity fraud combines real data like a Social Security number with a fake name and address to create a fictitious borrower. Informativ’s fraud detection checks whether the SSN matches the name and address on the application and flags mismatches before the deal proceeds.
A soft pull is used for pre-qualification, does not affect the consumer’s credit score, and does not require a Social Security number. A hard pull is required by lenders to fund a loan, does impact credit, and triggers compliance obligations including adverse action notices and risk-based pricing disclosures.
Informativ stores credit applications, adverse action records, and full compliance history in its dashboard which is accessible for audits, dispute resolution, or regulatory review. Long-term storage is required for both soft and hard pulls under federal credit law.
Verified Stips, powered by TurboPass, pulls income, employment, and residence data directly from the source in real time. It cannot be manipulated with fake pay stubs or forged bank statements, and it reflects a consumer’s current employment status not what they reported on an application.