Risk Management means identifying, checking and then controlling risks. Financial Technology (or FinTech) companies are new type of companies that use computer and electronic technologies to provide financial services to people. In last 3-5 years, FinTech have become a buzzword for growing start-ups in India and some of these Fintechs like PayTM, PhonePe, GPay (Google Pay) have become household names. People typically relate to these companies for their superior technology, sheer speed at which use cases are developed and executed and above all, the money it generates and the company valuations it garners. Risk management is a vast and important subject in any industry, but it is much more critical for FinTech industry. In this article, let us try to understand career prospects for this industry.

Many large Fintechs that we know today are in the Payments domain and they do not take or keep customer money like say in a Bank account or in Fixed Deposits etc. The focus on Payment is good for the economy as it not only helps the nation’s cause of going in for less-cash society but the customer base provides an opportunity for cross selling of mutual funds, Insurance, accepting bill payments and even account aggregation which has come in recently.

For example, the government launched Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on 11-4-2016. This was launched by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which is the umbrella organisation for all digital payments and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). UPI helps to make fast, cashless payments by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts using a mobile phone. To relate to a common man, UPI is the best example of a highly successful Fintech innovation with which any ordinary Indian can feel confident to spend a day outside of his home, only with his mobile phone without having to carry any hard cash. In this short span, the volume of transactions have grown at a phenomenal pace – as of December 2021, there are 274 Indian banks available on UPI that clocked 456 crore transactions, with value of ₹8.26 Lakh Crores (₹8,26,848 Crores) – which is one of the highest volumes in the world! As of May 2021, about 15 crore Indians used UPI regularly for payments and it is expected that by 2025 this will go up to about 50 crore Indians. IIT Madras is working to integrate voice command feature that can support English and Indian vernacular language in future – which means you can talk to your Mobile in Gujarati and it will help you make payments to anyone without any cash!

On the other hand as such digital payments grow, it is obvious that various types of frauds also go up, leading to an emerging need for Cyber risk professionals to tackle & prevent frauds committed on individuals, technology infrastructure like data breaches and targeted attacks on such platforms that bring in systemic issues.

Insights for a successful career in Fraud Risk Management (FinTechs – Payments): It is critical to know that a robust risk management framework is the backbone of all such success stories. While Enterprise risk management is a larger subject in itself, it most importantly covers Operational Risk management and within it Fraud risk management. There are specialist training courses to understand and handle Fraud risk management, conducted by foreign institutes or private Indian Consulting companies, some of which are as follows:

Training Courses:

• CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) is the most prominent course to begin with for any Fraud risk professional which gives a detailed insight on the 3 primary facets of Prevention, Detection and Investigation. It is conducted by Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), which has Global Head-quarters in Texas, USA and Chapters in India at Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. You can visit their website for more info at (https://www.acfe.com/).

• CIPSP (Certified International Payment Systems Professional) gives an in depth understanding on the technical aspects of how payment systems function across the globe. An in-depth understanding of this will equip people to identify and investigate potential systemic frauds. This training is conducted by MVL Consulting Pvt. Ltd., with headquarters in Pune. More information on above and other training courses is available on their website at (https://www.mvlco.com/index.php).

• IFS (International Forensic Science) Education Department provides multiple courses related to Cyber frauds with course duration of 2-12 months and one can go through the same as per his/her area of interest. More information on above and other training courses is available on their website at (https://www.ifsedu.in/).

• Network Intelligence Pvt. Ltd. (called NII consulting) is a pioneer in the field of Cyber-Security and also provides various trainings from 2-3 days up to 5 months. You can visit their website for more info at (https://www.niiconsulting.com/)

Any graduate looking to build a career as Risk professional can begin with the above courses and then look towards specialization based on specific interest. A considerable amount of learning in this area happens on the job purely because technology keeps changing virtually every day and current techniques to address this may become obsolete in no time. It is therefore recommended to be part of focused groups because formal circulation of such information would be available after a considerable lapse of time.

My name is Hardik Anil Dixit, based in Mumbai and with 20+ years of experience in field of Risk management and specialization in payment products. I will be pleased to offer any guidance required depending on the domain one is interested in and I can be reached on my cell at 9920622860 or hadixit@gmail.com.