How Does Your Bank Rate For Identity Theft?

Ever wonder which banks keep you safer against identity theft?

Wonder no more. The jury is in!

While most banks do pretty well in resolving identity fraud (such as dealing with disputed transactions on accounts), only three financial institutions scored best in a test of their ability to prevent, detect and resolve identity theft.

First, a few statistics.

• Last year, for the third year in a row, identity theft topped the list of fraud complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission.

• Consumers filed more than 685,000 identity theft and consumer fraud reports to the FTC in 2005, accounting for more than a third of all complaints the agency received.

• Consumers reported losses from fraud of more than $680 million. That's a median loss of about $350 per person. Remember, median is the midpoint. Half of the victims had losses higher than $350, the other half had losses lower.

And now, the three top rated financial institutions for their ability to prevent, detect and resolve identity theft (out of the top 24 financial institutions in the US) . . . . drum roll please. . . Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual.

The results were obtained by Javelin Strategy & Research in its annual Banking Identity Safety Scorecard.

The 24 banks they reviewed were AmSouth, Bank of America, Bank of New York, BB&T, Citibank, E*Trade, Fifth Third Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Marshall & Ilsley Bank, National City Bank, Navy FCU, NetBank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, Sovereign Bank, SunTrust, Union Bank of California, US Bank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo.

Safe Banking!

. . .Stephanie

technorati tags: Internet, Computers, Internet Security, Computers and Internet, identity theft, online banking, Stephanie Trahd ,
How Does Your Bank Rate For Identity Theft?