Executive summary
Established in 1940 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Kinecta is one of the largest credit unions in the U.S., with assets of $6.8 billion, more than 800 staff, and 250,000 members, primarily in California and New York. It offers accounts, loans, mortgages, credit cards, vehicle financing, insurance, and investments. At the heart of its risk management and fraud prevention efforts is Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions, providing the comprehensive, accurate information needed to make better decisions — faster and more confidently — to prevent losses and protect its member base.
The opportunity: Reacting to fraud vs. preventing it
Kinecta Federal Credit Union’s mission centers on financial wellness and education for the communities it serves —“servicing, educating, and helping the communities and really giving back,” as VP of Enterprise Risk Management Jorge Cortes explains. Against a rising tide of identity theft and first-party fraud, Kinecta faced a broader industry challenge — make faster, fairer onboarding decisions without sacrificing compliance or member experience. “My primary role is ensuring the credit union doesn’t suffer any major losses — limiting exposures of the credit union,” Cortes notes, underscoring the stakes for a member-owned organization where avoided losses translate into better rates and services.
Before adopting Thomson Reuters CLEAR, CLEAR ID Confirm, and CLEAR Risk Inform as an embedded control, the pain was acute and widely felt. Frontline teams relied on ad hoc, post-onboarding checks and escalations to the back office, creating 24 to 48 hour delays and inconsistent decisions. Accounts were sometimes opened and later closed when red flags emerged — eroding trust and experience. Their previous LexisNexis setup “was not embedded into our everyday process,” leaving branch staff uncomfortable parsing raw data and risking overreliance on credit scores. Meanwhile, risk and vendor-management teams struggled to proactively surface material issues — OFAC hits, bankruptcies, liens, inactive business status — especially for private vendors. As charge-offs and identity theft grew, the deviation from normal was clear; they were reacting after the fact instead of preventing bad accounts and risky vendor relationships up front. “We started to see an uptick more in charge-offs and opening accounts that were bad,” Cortes says. The net impact was higher exposure and operational drag.
The Solution: Why Thomson Reuters?
Kinecta was “a LexisNexis shop” when Cortes took over the risk team, and that tool “was not embedded into our everyday process, so it was utilized as needed.” After outreach from the Thomson Reuters team, Kinecta compared options and concluded “overall that CLEAR was a better, more comprehensive, kind of easier to use solution.” Specifically, there were a few competitive advantages that they felt CLEAR had over other solutions.
The first was its breadth of record and database coverage and its depth of analysis — making it, in their view, the most powerful and comprehensive solution on the market.
Importantly, it is also easy to use and customizable, so Kinecta can tailor the tools to suit its needs and narrow down key areas of interest. CLEAR’s ability to integrate with other third-party systems, such as Kinecta’s account opening software, was also a key factor behind the selection decision.
Several key features stand out. The scoring capabilities in CLEAR empower frontline staff to understand the risk profile of potential members more easily when opening new accounts. It helps ensure they are who they claim to be and judge whether they should be granted membership of Kinecta.
Its alert functionality is another major advantage. The risk management team can create lists of individuals or businesses they want to monitor, and CLEAR will notify them about significant changes, such as new judgements, bankruptcies, or sanctions. This eliminates the need to regularly run new reports — and again, it is fully customizable.
Lastly, the level of customer support offered by Thomson Reuters was another critical consideration.
“It's truly been a partnership over the years. Thomson Reuters has been right there with us in building the definitions and the profiles we need for our membership,” says Cortes.
“If we see some anomalies in the data or if there's data that is missing, we will go to Thomson Reuters. They are very quick to do the research and help us adjust whatever we need. If we have any issues, the support has always been there for us. The team is always accessible — we could call any one of them right now and get a response straight away. We have that constant connection and they do check in regularly with us, too. They’ve been fantastic.”
The outcome: Limiting loss exposure
Kinecta uses the CLEAR platform for in-depth public records, sanctions database, and media coverage searches. This includes CLEAR ID Confirm to validate customer identities and CLEAR Risk Inform to conduct analytics on high-risk subjects of interest.
Initially, CLEAR was deployed in the back office by the Risk Management team if suspicions arose around a member that required further investigation, if they stopped their repayments, or for further checks if they wanted a new product, such as a mortgage or loan. For example, the team would use CLEAR to research why they could no longer contact an individual, identify who else might be in their household, or spot red flags.
As the value of CLEAR became apparent, Kinecta rolled it out to the frontline branch management teams to use in the customer onboarding process. In doing so, it wanted to improve the member experience and ensure it was bringing better members on board by identifying potential causes for concern before accounts were opened.
As a result, the frontline team can make account opening decisions almost immediately or within a few hours, instead of waiting 24 to 48 hours for the back office to review an application. As Cortes points out, this is vital because these days people are not accustomed to having to wait. It also frees up the risk management team to focus on other things. He says, “We used to get one or two inquiries per day from the front-line teams asking if they can onboard an account. Now we’re getting far fewer inquiries, and we tend to push back and say, ‘You have the tools now to make those decisions.’”
Kinecta also uses CLEAR in the vendor management process. It conducts a regular review cycle of its 350 suppliers to identify issues that would make them reconsider the vendor relationship. For example, they can see if vendors appear on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or sanctions lists, if they have liens or judgements against them, or if they have bankruptcies in their backgrounds.
“On the vendor management side, if companies are privately held, they don't necessarily give us their financials,” explains Cortes. “So, we run the CLEAR report to see if there are any red flags. That's a significant piece in deciding whether to do business with some of our providers.”
“CLEAR has allowed us to make more confident decisions,” says Cortes. “It’s been a significant factor in limiting our risk exposure and our losses. Since we began integrating CLEAR at the start of the onboarding process, we’re making better decisions initially, so we’re seeing fewer identity theft claims, fewer issues with members, and a decrease in our losses due to fraud. CLEAR has certainly had an impact on that.”
If the results provided by CLEAR reveal inconsistencies compared to the information applicants have provided —which is relatively common, this will prompt Kinecta’s staff to dig deeper and ask more questions. This could include requesting proof of income or residence, asking for tax filings, or researching if they are employed by a particular business as stated.
“Without CLEAR, we probably would have onboarded a lot of bad accounts. We would have been in relationships with vendors that we shouldn't have, for example, a vendor that is providing critical services to us that's gone through bankruptcy. We would probably have had contract issues.”
For Cortes, there is a long list of other key benefits. He adds. “It has certainly saved us time, and it has allowed us to focus on what's important. It's also assisting us in staying compliant with our regulators, specifically when it comes to OFAC.”
“It’s the most comprehensive solution out there. I don't know where we'd be without CLEAR,” Cortes concludes.
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