Securing member trust with AI-powered fraud prevention at Suncoast Credit Union

Suncoast Credit Union exists to improve the financial lives of its members. And it’s on a mission to grow. The non-profit aims to support more members with more services—building capacity through AI and automation rather than increasing headcount.   

Suncoast has already improved the accuracy and speed of multiple processes across the organization. While the thousands of employee hours saved through automation have boosted employee experiences, too.   

Now, Suncoast is taking the next step—bringing AI and automation together with UiPath to protect members, build trust, and accelerate growth.  

Combating check fraud to protect members 

Check fraud is a common problem, a cost to organizations, and a concern for members. It can also be challenging to tackle. However active the fraud prevention team is, there’s a limit to the number of checks a human can analyze.  

For Suncoast, the number of checks processed per day was limited due to the resources needed to manually review the checks. Now, using the AI features in the UiPath Business Automation Platform™, that number has increased by more than 1000%. An application extracts data from incoming checks, stores it in a database, then triggers a UiPath automation to review each check for inconsistencies. If they’re found, the checks are passed to the fraud team to investigate.  

“In just six months, we’ve reduced fraud losses by approximately $800,000. Which is great for the organization. It also reinforces our brand message to do everything we can for our members,” said Dottie Dunn, Intelligent Automation Director at Suncoast. 

Speeding up auto lending  

Suncoast vehicle loans is a fast-growing, money-saving service for members. To make application processes more efficient, Dunn and team worked with UiPath to automate this key area of the business.  

Previously, motor dealers emailed through multiple documents to Suncoast—up to 35 per application in some cases. Each ‘document pack’ needed to be manually checked to ensure the required documents were present and correctly filled out. Not only was this a time-consuming, manual task, teams needed to validate the applications against Suncoast’s core banking and lending systems.  

Plus, over the past few years, the number of loan applications surged—requiring a doubling of staff from 15 to nearly 30 employees.  

Leveraging UiPath Document Understanding™, Suncoast automatically extracts, interprets, and processes data from loan packages, consolidating the information for easier review. The system also checks for the presence of all necessary documents before processing.  

With more than 300 dealership partners—many with different document formats and types—moving too fast may have impacted accuracy and led to failures. This wasn’t an option for Dunn, and the project continues—with AI models being trained and more dealers added to the program in a phased and logical way.  

Driving innovation through testing 

With digital transformation sweeping the industry, financial services providers must keep pace with the changes. Indeed, customers have come to expect convenient and reliable digital services.  

Suncoast is looking to stay ahead of the curve—by improving the speed of its software development cycles.  

“Our mid-year and end-of-year release software testing programs typically involve 30 to 50 people and a dedicated project management team. It’s labor-intensive process, with the manual testing often done on top of people’s regular duties,” said Dunn.  

To accelerate testing across its core applications, Suncoast is using UiPath Test Suite™. Designed to deliver a simpler, smoother, and more productive testing experience, Test Suite gives development teams all the AI-powered tools they need to manage, automate, distribute, and execute their work. When fully deployed, Suncoast expects to radically streamline checks on the company’s twice-yearly major releases—automating the process and removing the burden on developers.  

A strategic success   

Suncoast’s strategic investment in AI and automation has significantly enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and service delivery across the organization. These initiatives have reduced manual workloads and mitigated errors, and strengthened relationships with both members and partners. Crucially, they’ve had an impact on upskilling staff for future roles, too.  

Our focus is no longer just cost avoidance but enhancing the employee and member experience with UiPath.”

Dottie Dunn, Intelligent Automation Director.  

"We’ve brought on a citizen developer program, engaging teams in the development and execution of automation processes. It’s been a big success,” said Dunn.