Sumsub has launched a fraud management bundle designed to help banks and financial institutions in the Philippines comply with the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA), which takes effect on 25 June 2026.
The AFASA Fraud Management Bundle combines rule-based fraud detection with dynamic risk scoring in a hybrid transaction monitoring model. The system enables institutions to act on clear fraud signals — such as blacklist matches or bot activity — while applying a separate risk scoring layer to evaluate behavioural anomalies, transaction deviations, and contextual inconsistencies across more ambiguous cases.
Regulatory pressure meets AI-driven fraud
The launch comes as the Philippines contends with a sharp rise in AI-enabled fraud. According to Sumsub’s Identity Fraud Report 2025–2026, deepfake attacks in the Philippines grew 61% year-on-year in 2025 — among the highest rates in the region. Coordinated, multi-step fraud attempts rose 180% globally over the same period.
Under AFASA, financial institutions must implement enhanced fraud management systems and stronger authentication measures before the June deadline. The regulation gives institutions roughly six weeks from today to demonstrate compliance — a tight window that has driven demand for turnkey solutions.
Hybrid model targets both prevention and recovery
The bundle’s architecture separates fraud response into two tracks. Direct-action rules handle high-confidence fraud signals by rejecting or holding transactions outright, targeting outgoing transfers. A dynamic scoring layer handles incoming funds and lower-confidence cases, routing them for additional verification or human review. Sumsub says the design keeps intervention logic aligned with AFASA’s specific requirements around both fraud prevention and fund recovery.
“The regulatory environment in the Philippines is evolving quickly, with clearer expectations on how institutions should detect, assess, and respond to suspicious activity,” said Penny Chai, Vice President, APAC at Sumsub. “By combining rule-based actions with aggregated risk scoring in a hybrid model, the AFASA Fraud Management Bundle allows institutions to intervene immediately in clear fraud cases while applying more gradual, risk-based assessment across different transaction types.”
The launch follows Sumsub’s partnership with Go Digital Philippines and reflects the company’s broader push across the ASEAN market, where it is working with local partners on digital identity, fraud prevention, and AI governance initiatives.
