GranGuard

The problem

For too long society has stood by as its weakest members, the elderly, have become prey to the scammers of the world out to empty their wallets. Because of our constant worry regarding our grandparents and how they deal with various forms of financial scams, we started brainstorming about a way that a bank could potentially protect their most vulnerable clients from these types of attacks.

Doing background research on Bunq also made us come to the conclusion that only a tiny subset of their user base were above the age of 60. Therefore we spotted a gap in the product offering and created a unique selling point that could attract clients from that demographic in the form of our system, GranGuard.

The solution

We created an optional addon, which can be enabled for senior users, designed to analyze transaction patterns using a machine learning anomaly detection model trained on the Bunq API data, with the intent to learn from their spending habits and create a system that flags suspicious transactions that don’t match their spending habits.

While a suspicious transaction takes place, this system automatically flags and blocks it. This in turn instantly activates a virtual security AI agent, which calls the elderly user’s cellphone to ask about the transaction in question.

We deemed a phone call to be the most accessible and effective option to intervene in the potentially problematic situation for the elderly. To ensure that the user can verify that the number belongs to Bunq, when creating an account, the phone number that the agent uses is added to the contacts of the user so that it is clearly visible as Bunq’s Security Agent.

The user can then explain the circumstances of the transaction which allows the agent to determine whether it was intentional or rather a result of scammer’s manipulation. The agent is trained to ask questions uncovering different details about the transaction with the intent to clearly warn the user if it's deemed a likely scam.

However, the final decision about whether to unblock that transaction is out of the agent’s control and in the hands of the user.