Overview of Private Consulting Projects:
While I have written many public facing articles, white papers and industry studies, the bulk of the work I have done as a junior and senior level Risk Management Consultant have been private consulting analyses and documents for a variety of clients. Almost all of these client relationships are private, while the nature and results of these consulting engagements are even more confidential. Although I can' t go into detail about these consulting projects, I can provide a general overview of the types of consulting engagements I have led for various types of clients.
eCommerce, Mobile, and Multi-Channel Merchants
I've had the privilege of working with a plethora of merchant clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100, both domestic and international. This has also been a very diverse sampling of retail industries or vertical markets including department stores, electronics, precious metals and jewelry, digital goods, gaming, money remittance, health/beauty, multi-level marketing, office supplies, streaming entertainment, charitable organizations and more.
While consulting engagements vary based on client needs, most projects have focused on risk management assessment and fraud prevention strategy design. One of my early projects when coming on-board with The Fraud Practice was developing a database for quickly mapping and interpreting credit card chargeback reason codes to business vulnerability points and errors that led to fraud, fulfillment and customer service related chargebacks. These Chargeback Monitoring Reports provided a quick and valuable assessment of business health with actionable results.
I often visit clients in person or conduct extensive discovery workshop sessions via web and teleconference to provide in depth fraud and risk management assessments. I focus on prioritizing and addressing the most significant gaps in fraud detection and prevention to help clients stop current fraud losses and mitigate future fraud attacks. These assessments go beyond the payment event to also address account takeover and other forms of online fraud, while providing best practice recommendations to take corrective action, all in the context of the individual client's risk exposure, sales margins and appetite for risk.
I additionally conduct extensive data analysis on web user and transactional data to identify fraud patterns and uncover fraud rings targeting a client's web or mobile site. Beyond using this data analysis for risk management assessments, I consider company-specific business factors and customer trends to develop an improved fraud prevention strategy. This typically includes a mix of in-house and third party tools, techniques and services for mitigating fraud, while determining the appropriate business rules and thresholds for automated and manual fraud screening.
Fraud Solution Vendors and Payment Service Providers
As an experienced eCommerce risk management consultant who has worked closely with a variety of merchant clients, I have developed a strong understanding of the market needs and pain-points regarding payment acceptance and risk management in the Card or Customer Not Present (CNP) channels. This has also led to a deep understanding of the (literally) thousands of risk and payment vendors servicing this space and understanding their competitive strengths and focal points to be sure any vendor recommendations are what is best fit for the merchant client at hand (The Fraud Practice is vendor agnostic and only makes vendor recommendations based on specific client needs).
This market knowledge and experience has led to The Fraud Practice, and myself as a senior level consultant, working with payment and fraud solution providers to help assess their market position, market share and key differentiators relative to core and peripheral competitors. This can also include recommendations on service developments to address market needs and more effectively compete, as well as helping these vendors craft a clear, concise and accurate message that properly conveys their value proposition and will resonate with the merchant community.
Private Equity and Venture Capital Firms
Continuing to draw from payment and risk industry market knowledge, while also utilizing my background in Economics and statistical forecasting, I am also often called upon to provide Total Addressable Market estimates, competitive analysis and company valuations related to potential investment or acquisition targets in the payments and fraud prevention (B2B) space.
I have worked with several private equity firms (and many I have worked with multiple times) to conduct due diligence as well as market and competitive analyses that heavily influences their decision to make an investment in a target company, as well as help determine the valuation and size of the investment. There has been much investment and consolidation in the payments and risk industry since 2010, and I find these types of projects to be among some of my favorites as it typically involves using macro and micro economic analysis and forecasting.