Paladin Fraud
Leading the Charge against Fraud

Jamon Whitehead and Jim Houlihan founded Paladin in 2016 (with another partner who left the firm 3 years ago), combining their fraud knowledge and expertise from the Ecommerce and financial service sectors. As individuals experienced in the field of fraud prevention, Whitehead and Houlihan exited their respective jobs to fill the void they had often seen in a broad range of organizations— the need to provide independent expertise in fraud and fill the disconnect between vendors and their clients. The scarcity of factual, non-biased information that companies have about solution providers makes it arduous to find one that lowers fraud risk and improves customer experience.

Having worked extensively as merchant advisors and connected with a wide array of solution providers, FinTechs, financial services and merchant organizations, the duo puts decades of fraud-prevention experience to the practice, such that clients can focus on their business. “It’s not that we appear suddenly in the market knowing precisely what an organization needs,” says Houlihan. “We’ve been in the trenches in the daily battle against fraud and have created Paladin using this experience.” Paladin’s services extend from assessing existing technology, strategies, and internal operations to personnel training and adopting the right standard operating procedures (SOPs) for organizations. Traditional “discovery and recommendations” lay the foundation for customized consulting services where a “one size” approach does not fit all clients.

When working with clients, team Paladin resorts to creating a customized package. The company refrains from taking the same approach against fraud prevention for every client, and instead, follows the motto of ‘one solution does not solve all problems.’ “You need to know and trust the person on the other side of the transaction for your business to successfully grow,” asserts Whitehead. To substantiate this, Houlihan cites a case study where Paladin worked with a major credit bureau. In an engagement that lasted for over two years, Paladin helped the client rework their identity verification and authentication management functions. This involved moving away from an archaic Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA) and migrating towards a more accurate identity proofing service utilizing both the web and call centers. Additionally, Paladin also assisted in creating a document-based step-up verification for the client.

An End-To-End Protection

Over the years, the Paladin team has witnessed many clients in the retail and Ecommerce space deal with a high rate of fraudulent chargebacks. Although merchant organizations have made attempts to integrate technology into their processes, they still face difficulties implementing it, mostly due to a lack of personnel training. The current Covid-19 crisis exacerbated this.

With the travel, retail, and hospitality industries reeling under the pandemic’s effects, many organizations are locked in chargeback disputes. Paladin helps dispute teams and manual review staffs in these companies implement more efficient SOPs to streamline their operations and maximize efficiency in settling these cases.

The core of our services lies in compiling and presenting information in a format that further educates the end-user about solution providers and the verticals they are active in

Not only does Paladin assess risks, conduct analyses, recommend actions, create strategy (ies) and assist in product implementations, but it also trains clients’ teams and provides ongoing consulting as needed. “The core of our services lies in compiling and presenting information in a format that further educates the end-user about solution providers and the verticals they are active in,” says Whitehead. This ideology is mirrored in the company’s merchant services, vendor services, and, most of all, in the PVR.

Strategists in the Perplexing World of Fraud Prevention

The fraud prevention landscape is brimming with seemingly expert solution providers—all of whom claim to be the perfect fit for one’s organization. Forced to make a choice that risks choosing the wrong vendor to partner with or potentially painting the company as an easy target for fraud, distraught leaders can quite easily jeopardize their business. To help out in this decision, these organizations need a partner that updates them on the constant evolution of fraud mitigation solutions.

Paladin is one such company that helps clients understand the latest innovations in the fraud prevention landscape and helps them select and utilize the best systems, platforms, and tools. With a team seasoned in assessing risk and successfully implementing fraud solutions, the organization also creates a vendor report that gives clients a bird’s eye view of the landscape and a detailed, on-the-ground understanding of every solution and challenge.

The Paladin Vendor Report

Paladin’s Vendor Report, curated by industry experts at the company, provides detailed information on over 40 vendors who offer a wide variety of fraud prevention tools, platforms, and services. It is a fully independent guide to the top solution providers in the digital and omnichannel fraud environment. “For the last four years, we have published annual reports of the solution provider environment. The vendor-agnostic PVR creates an end-to-end understanding of the latest technology for our clients,” says Whitehead,. The report focuses on several key areas during the vendor discovery process, encompassing parameters such as product functionality and technology involved, available services through their client lifecycle, business development strategies, sales, and targeted market verticals.

Deeply immersed in the fraud solution space and supported by the Merchant Risk Council, Paladin has designed its report to help merchants navigate the ever-expanding sea of available solutions and service providers. The company fully engages with over 25 different vendors who offer risk-mitigation products, and then proceeds to aggregate, examine, and compile the information from each participating vendor. Paladin’s team is present on-site to interview employees from all-volunteer companies’ departments in a two-day engagement. This approach ensures that Paladin gets a holistic understanding of the vendor and its offerings. In addition, Paladin includes publicly available knowledge on another two dozen providers to fully round out the report.

“The PVR is vendor agnostic, fully independent, and creates an end to end understanding of the latest technology for our clients”

Although the PVR report dives extensively into a solution provider’s offerings, it is purely informational and not designed to rate the vendors’ products and services. It does not include any rating system, opinions or reviews, and is only aimed at helping merchants and financial service providers pick a vendor whose functionalities align with their requisites.

The reliability of the PVR can be attributed to the intensive research done by Paladin’s team, which is then reinforced by the vast industry knowledge of the company’s leaders. On the vendor facet of the company’s services, Paladin conducts extensive research on major technology providers within the fraud prevention industry and helps gauge products’ strengths, weaknesses, marketability, and opportunities. In short, Paladin identifies the value a product brings to the marketplace and partners with the vendor to ensure that they head in the right direction and target the right demographic. With the fifth edition of the PVR set to launch in February 2021, Whitehead discusses changes clients can expect. “Traditionally, our report has been focused almost entirely on the Ecommerce and retail spaces. In our upcoming editions, however, we intend to shift our attention to include financial institutions (FI) and the FinTech space as a whole,” he says.

A Transpose into Fintech

In April 2020, MVB Financial Corp (Nasdaq: MVBF), the holding company for MVB Bank, acquired Paladin to expand its FinTech vertical with a commitment to fraud prevention. Now a subsidiary of MVB Bank, Paladin Fraud, has expanded its services from not only helping Ecommerce companies with transactional risk management, but also aiding FinTechs and FIs with identity risk and fraud assessments in environments regulated by stringent policies. Assisting organizations to comply with regulations set by the Patriot Act and enforced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and other financial authorities, Paladin can help its clients build identity verification strategies, policies, and processes. The company’s increasing involvement in the FinTech regulatory space also means that it will soon create vendor reports more specific to regions in the EU and the Asia Pacific.

Paladin was built to be a lighthouse that guides lost organizations on an ocean fraught with fraud and regulatory complexities. And in that regard, it is a beacon shining bright and casting its light farther ahead than other teams would have ever ventured.