The financial services sector faces a critical challenge: as artificial intelligence makes advanced fraud techniques widely accessible, institutions must strengthen their defenses quickly or risk heavy losses.
At the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2025, one of the world’s leading AI gatherings, experts from FinVolution, a global fintech company, offered a glimpse into the intensifying contest between financial security and increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.
A new fraud landscape beyond traditional scams
Financial fraud has entered a new era of complexity, according to Chunping Wang, FinVolution’s chief AI scientist. According to Wang, FinVolution has identified three categories of fraud that institutions must counter simultaneously.
“First-party fraud involves users deliberately providing false information to secure loans,” said Wang during his presentation. “Third-party fraud centers on identity theft, while fraud rings represent the most dangerous evolution: sophisticated networks that disguise criminal members as legitimate users while orchestrating large-scale schemes.”
To confront these threats, FinVolution has developed multimodal graphs that process vast amounts of data through a unified network of over one billion node connections. These systems integrate complex networks with facial recognition data, voiceprint analysis, and behavioral patterns in real time. The approach enables the detection of potential fraud networks even as they adapt and evolve, advancing beyond traditional rule-based detection systems that criminals have learned to bypass.
“We are continuously refining techniques for dynamic graph anomaly detection, graph model robustness and trustworthiness, as well as more fundamental graph foundation models,” Wang noted. “Only by iterating algorithms in real-world business environments can we build a truly resilient framework for financial security.”
Tackling deepfake challenges with AI
The spread of easily accessible deepfake technology has further shifted the fraud landscape, according to Lei Chen, vice president at FinVolution. The implications go well beyond simple impersonation.
“Fraudsters are increasingly turning to face-swapping, voice spoofing, and video manipulation to bypass financial safeguards,” Chen said. “The most concerning trend is that these tools are becoming exponentially cheaper and more convincing, while detection capabilities tend to lag behind generation technology.”
This gap undermines the trust mechanisms that underpin digital financial services. Standard verification tools, from video calls to biometric authentication, become unreliable when criminals can convincingly impersonate legitimate users.
Global collaboration in the fight against financial crime
FinVolution’s approach to staying ahead extends beyond internal R&D. The company actively participates in international collaborations and organizes global AI challenges that serve as proving grounds for cutting-edge detection technologies.
Its tenth Global Data Science Competition, focused on deepfake image detection, drew more than 652 participants from leading universities and technology firms worldwide. These events serve a dual purpose: advancing the state of detection technology while building an international community of researchers focused on financial security challenges.
Chen stressed that technical capability alone cannot resolve all fraud-related risks. “In financial services, AI must be both functional and trustworthy,” he explained. “The future lies in human-AI collaboration and multimodal collaboration. With this foundation, AI-native applications can evolve into secure, personalized, and truly scalable financial services.”
About FinVolution Group
FinVolution Group is a fintech company that connects millions of consumers as well as small and medium enterprises with financial institutions.
Founded in 2007 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017, we have been at the forefront of the pan-Asian credit technology industry, pioneering innovative technologies in credit risk assessment, fraud detection, big data, and AI. With a proven track record of robust growth in pan-Asian countries, we have established leading fintech platforms in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
This press release was published in partnership with FinVolution Group.