Naftali Harris was pursuing a doctorate in statistics at Stanford University when Affirm CEO Max Levchin convinced him to drop out of the program and become the first data scientist at the buy now/pay later leader.
During his time at the company, Harris said he discovered that the need for sophisticated financial fraud prevention tools ran much deeper than he initially expected. He encountered innovative forms of fraud that most tools were ill-equipped to combat, such as when fraudsters apply for accounts using a synthetic rather than a stolen identity. It suggested that risk tools needed to innovate ahead of where fraud was heading. He co-founded SentiLink to address this issue.
Harris and his co-founder Maxwell Blumenfeld created SentiLink in 2017 to provide financial institutions an identity verification technology, with solutions to prevent synthetic fraud, identity theft and emerging forms of first-party fraud. Today, SentiLink works with over 200 financial institutions in the U.S. to help stop fraud at account opening.
Organizations lose around 5% of their annual revenues to fraudulent activity, according to a report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. SentiLink seeks to identify emerging areas of fraud, ensuring that the United States government, its banks, credit bureaus and fintechs remain competitive in thwarting them.
"Sentilink is not just built on technology," Harris said. "A team of dedicated risk analysts is constantly reviewing cases from partners and using the real-time intelligence on changing fraud trends to keep their models way ahead of the curve. This also adds a layer of service where customers interact with SentiLink not just as a software vendor, but as a trusted partner that isn't afraid to dive in and collaborate to tackle new fraud challenges as they arise."
