In mid-2024, Close Brothers Motor Finance faced a sophisticated fraud that would fundamentally change their approach to document verification.
It looked like a dream deal for the sales team: financing a £135,000 luxury car for £86,000 with a substantial £50,000 deposit.
Then, four months later, payments stopped.
Investigation revealed the devastating truth:
That initial £86,000 turned into a £400,000 gross loss.
This type of sophisticated document fraud was becoming increasingly difficult to detect through their existing manual reviews, which consumed 30-35 minutes per application, with 15 minutes dedicated solely to fraud assessment.
When suspicious documents required deeper investigation, multiple team members would get involved, creating bottlenecks that delayed customer approvals for hours. This manual-intensive process threatened to undermine their core mission of making vehicle purchases easy and accessible for customers.
Soon after the luxury car incident, Close Brothers Motor Finance embarked on a trial of Resistant AI’s Document Forensics across their operations. Team members began dropping documents into the Web interface and the transformation was immediate.
The service immediately revealed 18 additional cases of fraud.
While they recovered some losses through vehicle repossession, the resource-intensive recovery process highlighted a critical truth: prevention is far more effective than remediation.
And prevention had just gotten a lot easier.
Now, they got a document fraud check in just 12 seconds, replacing the previous 15-minute manual fraud assessment process. The underwriting team’s efficiency doubled and they were able to focus on genuine risk evaluation rather than time-consuming document authentication.
The financial impact has been nothing short of remarkable. Since implementation in August 2024, Close Brothers Motor Finance has achieved results that exceed all expectations:
The tool has fundamentally changed how they approach fraud prevention, creating an engaged, fraud-aware workforce.
Close Brother Motor Finance continues to regularly engage with Resistant AI to review difficult cases, expand their knowledge of document fraud and improve risk controls.
The dramatic transformation and success in motor finance has driven expansion plans across Close Brothers' broader business portfolio, including premium finance, savings, invoice finance, and asset finance divisions.
The only regret? The timing of their discovery: "We met you ten days too late."
The solution was so effective that a two-month gap in negotiations caused an uproar: