Lori Hodges of Visa and Shari Hoover, card fraud manager at Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, shared the stage to give credit unions some insight into why the $5 billion credit union has kept fraud in house. “It gives us control over false declines,” Hoover related. “But also, members don’t want to deal with a third party. There’s a loss of trust when they hear from someone else instead of the credit union.” More importantly, however, is the degree to which a credit union’s own, dedicated employees will go above and beyond to investigate a fraud case instead of just paying off on the claim, she said. For example, she related the story of a member who claimed not to have made $5,000 worth of purchases at a Cabbage Patch Kid convention. “We reached out to the merchant to alert them that this woman was claiming she didn’t buy these dolls. The merchant was outraged,” she said. As a result, the merchant was also only too happy to help with the investigation and promptly emailed the credit union member to ask if she had received her merchandise and if she was pleased with it. She happily responded to the merchant that yes, she had the dolls and was thrilled with them. The CU’s fraud investigator also went to the member’s Facebook page, where the member had posted a photo of all her new dolls. It was awfully hard for the member to continue to claim she hadn’t made those purchases, Hoover said, adding, “are you sure a third party will go to that much trouble?”