ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – PSCU Financial Services, the card servicing CUSO that serves over 500 credit unions that process their transactions with First Data, has recovered $11.1 million in fraud losses experienced by its members' cardholders, PSCU has announced. The company processed and closed 96,000 cases of card fraud in 2003, up from the 74,000 cases processed and closed in 2002. However, the firm recovered greater volumes in 2002 as last year's recoveries totaled $12.8 million. The CUSO pointed out that this year's recovery equals 48.2% of all its fraud claims, a figure which PSCU said represents almost all the money that could be recovered. This compares favorably with the industry's recovery rate of between 35% and 40%. "We utilize a number of state-of-the-art tools to assist us in managing card fraud recovery," said David J. Serlo, President of PSCU Financial Services. "Our Contact Center serves as the initial touch point for a credit union member that has experienced card fraud. We are able to help set the expectation for the consumer and gather the necessary information to initiate a successful merchant chargeback immediately." PSCU attributed a lot of this recovery success to its experienced staff, whose time working in the often changing and sometimes arcane world of VISA and MasterCard chargeback rules give it a definite edge, according to Serlo. "The average tenure of representatives that work fraud cases is six years," said Serlo. "Our dispute representatives have an average tenure of seven years. The expertise of our representatives greatly influences our ability to help credit unions minimize their exposure to fraud losses." PSCU Financial Services also provides member-owners the ability to block debit or credit card authorizations for their card portfolio from specific countries, zip codes or currency exchanges when evidence of credit card fraud is being reported in these areas. These actions protect members from unauthorized use of their credit and debit cards, and can prevent losses. This program also allows individual cardholders to exempt their cards from this protection if they anticipate using their cards in these areas. [email protected]