Even though you don't have a police badge, you still fight crimes and protect people from illegal attacks in your job as a fraud specialist. Fraud specialists work for banks or financial institutions to investigate fraud on customers' accounts. By monitoring transactions and tracking suspicious financial activity, fraud specialists identify potential risks to customers' assets.
As a fraud specialist, you will observe customers' banking patterns and red flag any transaction that veers from the usual transaction patters. Tracing suspicious transaction amounts, types, or partners, you have to spot information that proves criminal activity. It's up to you to suspend accounts under attack and to verify if any illegal activities occured against the customer's assets.
This position requires an investigative mind prone to analytical thinking. You will work in a corporate office environment, monitoring accounts and accessing necessary information the moment suspicious activities arise.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a fraud specialist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $16.08 an hour? That's $33,443 a year!
There are certain skills that many fraud specialists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed detail oriented, physical strength and communication skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a fraud specialist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 24.2% of fraud specialists included fraud trends, while 10.9% of resumes included communication, and 10.0% of resumes included outbound calls. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the fraud specialist job title. But what industry to start with? Most fraud specialists actually find jobs in the finance and retail industries.
If you're interested in becoming a fraud specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 33.5% of fraud specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 6.7% of fraud specialists have master's degrees. Even though some fraud specialists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a fraud specialist. When we researched the most common majors for a fraud specialist, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on fraud specialist resumes include associate degree degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a fraud specialist. In fact, many fraud specialist jobs require experience in a role such as customer service representative. Meanwhile, many fraud specialists also have previous career experience in roles such as cashier or sales associate.