MANAGING FRAUD - HEI Services

Fraud Prevention Tool – SIRA -
(Syndicated Intelligence for Risk Avoidance)
• SIRA is a fraud management system provided by Synectic Solutions. The system helps the SIU track
fraudulent applications within the Student Finance system by using a rules based search engine to
identify duplicate information such as Bank details, email addresses and Phone numbers.
• Rules have been applied to the database and all approved applications for Student Finance are run
against the Rules to determine if matches are present. Any matches are presented to the team in
batches depending on the Rules hit by the application. Examples of the worklists completed by the
team are, Matches to Fraud, Matches to Suspect, and Multiple Matches. The lists are prioritised and
worked accordingly.
• The system matches current year application data and enables the team to add suspect information
such as names and addresses of individuals who may apply for funding and who are not entitled to
receive it.
• Students applying for funding, and who have been approved, will appear on SIRA within 24 hours if
they match for any reason with other current students, or fraudulent students from previous academic
years.
The SIRA check is carried out after all other SLC checks are undertaken. These are listed on the
next page.