Fraud performance metrics: Unlocking the secrets of fraud metrics with Sardine's Andrew Austin
Today I am talking about fraud performance metrics and what it looks like when fraud teams stop measuring activity and start measuring whether the work is actually helping the business. Because that is really the issue here. A lot of programs have dashboards. A lot of teams have numbers. But that does not automatically mean they are measuring the right things.
In this episode of Fraudology, I am joined by Andrew Austin, Head of Fraud Prevention at Sardine, to talk about how fraud teams should think about fraud success metrics, fraud test measurement, and the broader challenge of proving fraud program effectiveness. We also get into evaluating fraud vendors, fraud solution testing, and what changes when someone moves from merchant-side fraud metrics to the solution provider side.
We also talk through customer retention and fraud, fraud impact on reputation, client partnership in fraud prevention, and the very practical question of how teams define success when they are running tests, reviewing vendors, or trying to justify investment. And this matters. Because fraud performance metrics are not just reporting tools. They shape priorities, budgets, vendor decisions, and how seriously the business takes fraud outcomes.
Here is what that fraud lens means in practice:
- Fraud performance metrics should measure business impact, not just fraud team activity
- Fraud success metrics get more useful when they include customer, reputation, and operational outcomes
- Evaluating fraud vendors requires stronger fraud test measurement than most teams are used to
- Fraud analytics strategy works better when teams know exactly what success is supposed to look like
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- Why fraud performance metrics are critical for proving fraud program effectiveness
- How fraud test measurement and fraud solution testing help teams make better vendor decisions
- What Andrew Austin has learned about evaluating fraud vendors and building strong client partnership in fraud prevention
- Why customer retention and fraud, fraud loss measurement, and false positive measurement all need to be part of the conversation
- How merchant-side fraud metrics differ from solution provider evaluation and what teams can learn from both perspectives
You should listen to this episode if you:
- Work in fraud, risk, or operations and want to build stronger fraud performance metrics
- Need practical insight into fraud KPI strategy, fraud ops reporting, and measuring fraud prevention ROI
- Are evaluating fraud vendors, running fraud solution testing, or building test-and-learn fraud programs
- Want a better understanding of false positive measurement, fraud loss measurement, and ecommerce fraud measurement
- Care about fraud analytics strategy, fraud team benchmarking, and stronger vendor partnership best practices
If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps with getting the word out.
Episode notes & key takeaways
Fraud performance metrics only matter if they measure the outcomes that count
Let’s break this down. One of the biggest problems in fraud is that teams can end up measuring what is easy instead of what is useful. Case counts. Review volume. Queue size. Approval rates. All of that can matter. But none of it tells the full story by itself.
That is why this episode is so useful. Andrew talks about fraud performance metrics in a way that moves past surface-level reporting and gets into the real question: how do you define success in a fraud program? Because if success is vague, the reporting will be vague too. And that is where teams start losing clarity.
This is exactly why fraud performance metrics need to connect back to fraud loss measurement, customer retention and fraud, false positive measurement, and fraud impact on reputation. If those outcomes are missing, the team may look busy without being able to prove it is being effective.
- Fraud performance metrics should reflect real business and customer outcomes
- Fraud success metrics are weaker when they focus only on team activity or case volume
- Fraud loss measurement and false positive measurement need to sit alongside operational metrics
- Fraud program effectiveness is easier to prove when teams define success clearly from the start
Fraud test measurement is what makes vendor decisions more credible
This is where things get interesting. A lot of teams say they are evaluating fraud vendors, but the actual test design can be pretty loose. That is not ideal. Because if the test is weak, the conclusion is weak too.
Andrew gets into the challenge of fraud test measurement and why defining success metrics up front matters so much when running fraud solution testing. That makes sense. If you do not know exactly what you are trying to improve, then every vendor demo starts sounding good and every result can be interpreted too generously. That usually does not end well.
This is one of those places where measuring fraud prevention ROI becomes much more practical. The better the test design, the more confidence you have in the result. And that means better decisions during solution provider evaluation.
- Fraud test measurement should define success before the test begins
- Evaluating fraud vendors requires more than demos and general performance claims
- Fraud solution testing works better when teams align on the exact metrics that matter
- Measuring fraud prevention ROI is easier when the baseline and outcome are both clear
Merchant-side experience changes how you think about fraud metrics
Another valuable part of this conversation is Andrew’s perspective moving from the merchant side to the solution provider side. That matters because merchant-side fraud metrics usually feel much more immediate. Losses, approvals, customer friction, queue pressure, chargebacks. All very real. All very visible.
Once someone moves to the provider side, the view broadens. Now the conversation includes multiple clients, different use cases, different success definitions, and the challenge of maintaining client partnership in fraud prevention over time. That creates a more complex way of thinking about metrics because not every customer values the same outcome equally.
This is why solution provider evaluation can get messy if teams are not careful. The merchant wants relevance to their environment. The provider may be looking across patterns at scale. Both perspectives are useful. But they need to be translated properly.
- Merchant-side fraud metrics are often more directly tied to immediate operational pain
- Solution provider evaluation requires understanding how vendor performance maps to your business goals
- Client partnership in fraud prevention improves when both sides agree on what success looks like
- Vendor partnership best practices depend on shared expectations, not just strong sales language
False positives, customer trust, and reputation belong in the metric set too
The episode also makes an important point about what fraud teams tend to underweight. It is not enough to ask how much fraud was stopped. Teams also need to ask what legitimate customers experienced along the way.
That is where false positive measurement, customer retention and fraud, and fraud impact on reputation become very important. Because a fraud program can reduce losses and still quietly damage the business if it blocks too many good users, frustrates strong customers, or creates unnecessary trust issues. That is a problem.
This might not seem like a big deal when a fraud dashboard looks green. But in fraud prevention, it absolutely is. Good fraud KPI strategy needs to capture both what the team prevented and what it may have harmed unintentionally.
- False positive measurement is a core fraud metric, not a side note
- Customer retention and fraud are connected more closely than many teams admit
- Fraud impact on reputation can be significant even when fraud losses look controlled
- Fraud KPI strategy should balance protection, customer experience, and business trust
Strong fraud programs treat measurement like strategy, not just reporting
The broader lesson from this episode is that fraud analytics strategy should not begin at the dashboard. It should begin at the objective. What is the team trying to improve? What tradeoffs is it willing to make? What outcomes actually define a better fraud program?
That is why fraud team benchmarking, fraud ops reporting, and test-and-learn fraud programs matter so much here. Metrics should help teams learn, compare, adjust, and improve. Not just produce slides. The teams that use metrics as strategy tend to get much more value out of both their vendors and their internal work.
That is really the shift Andrew is pointing to. Better measurement creates better fraud decisions. And better fraud decisions create stronger programs.
- Fraud analytics strategy should start with business objectives, not just available data
- Fraud ops reporting is most useful when it supports learning and decision-making
- Test-and-learn fraud programs improve when teams measure outcomes consistently
- Fraud team benchmarking works better when the metrics reflect real effectiveness, not just productivity
The bigger theme in this episode is that fraud performance metrics are not just about proving value after the fact. They are about building a fraud program that knows what it is trying to accomplish and can measure whether it is getting there. Andrew brings a practical lens to that challenge, especially for teams trying to evaluate vendors, run better tests, and connect fraud work to business outcomes that leadership actually cares about.
