Bank of the West Awarded a 2014 Identity Safety in Banking Award by Javelin Strategy & Research

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of the West announced today that it received 2014 Identity Safety in Banking Award in Prevention category from Javelin Strategy & Research, a Greenwich Associates LLC company. The bank ranked third among the top five performers in the Prevention category. In its ninth year, Javelin's annual Identity Safety in Banking Scorecard evaluates the Top 50 financial institutions by deposit size and assesses the performance of individual financial institutions on their customer-facing security features.

"Our customers' safety and security is our highest priority, and we're pleased to receive this recognition by Javelin.  As the threat landscape evolves, we want to optimize our environment to help protect our clients against fraudulent activities," said David Pollino, senior vice president and enterprise fraud prevention officer at Bank of the West. "The bank is taking many proactive measures to provide our clients increased protection to mitigate against the increased cyber threats."

According to Javelin, Bank of the West, along with the other top four performers in the Prevention category, stood out for offering multifactor mobile authentication and having the most comprehensive packages of security features on basic checking accounts. Compared to only 42% of the top 50 financial institutions, 100% of the Top 5 Prevention awardees offer consumers incentives for dedicated mobile app usage.

In addition to the features recognized by Javelin, the bank takes additional measures to protect and educate customers on breaches and fraudulent activities, including providing a secure authentication process for online banking products, blog posts and multi-channel customer service.

About Javelin's Identity Safety in Banking Methodology

In 2014, Javelin evaluated the consumer-facing safety features of the top 50 banks and credit unions by deposit size, a 100% increase in the number of financial institutions surveyed in 2013. Financial institutions without a significant branch system in the U.S. that did not offer demand deposit accounts or were a private bank were not included in this evaluation. For foreign banks that were among the top 25 banks by deposit size, their U.S. commercial bank subsidiary was evaluated.

The dynamic nature of fraud trends requires Javelin to annually update and refine the criteria to reflect the highest standards to combat fraud trends. The criteria reflected Javelin's Protection, Detection, and Resolution Model with a total of 100 points: Prevention (45 points), Detection (35 points), and Resolution (20 points). The criteria used to evaluate these security measures are not intended to encompass all consumer-facing security measures, nor do they cover financial institution's back-end security practices.

Data was collected in April and May of 2014. Javelin evaluated identity safety information provided to consumers on the financial institution's websites or supplied by customer service representatives. Javelin also implemented mystery shopping of financial institution's customer service representatives through phone and web chats. On average, Javelin conducted 13 calls to each financial institution. If Javelin researchers had a reason to doubt the information provided by a customer service representative, the call was terminated without adding to the average number of calls.

About Bank of the West:

Bank of the West is a regional financial services company chartered in California and headquartered in San Francisco with $69 billion in assets. Founded in 1874, Bank of the West provides a wide range of personal, commercial, wealth management and international banking services through more than 650 offices in 21 states and the internet (bankofthewest.com). Bank of the West is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, which has a presence in 75 countries with 180,000 employees. 

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SOURCE Bank of the West