Fraud Investigation, Analyst

At Community Financial System, Inc. (CFSI), we are dedicated to providing our customers with friendly, personalized, high-quality financial services and products. Our retail division, Community Bank, N.A., operates more than 200 customer facilities across Upstate New York, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Vermont and Western Massachusetts. Beyond retail banking, we also offer commercial banking, wealth management, investment management, insurance and risk management, and benefit plan administration.

Just as our employees are committed to helping our customers manage their finances, we're committed to our employees. After all, they make it happen for our customers every day.

To ensure our people can enjoy long and successful careers here at CFSI, we offer competitive compensation, great benefits, and professional development and advancement opportunities. As an equal-opportunity workplace and affirmative-action employer, we celebrate and support a diverse workplace for the benefit of all: our employees, customers and communities.

The Analyst, Fraud Investigation role is a senior analytical position responsible for handling more complex, higher-risk fraud cases that require deeper review, broader analysis, and advanced judgment. This role serves as an experienced escalation point above Fraud Prevention Analysts, performing comprehensive case assessment and determining when full investigative review is required. While not conducting formal investigations themselves, these analysts play a critical role in identifying organized fraud activity, systemic risk, and the need for deeper inquiry.

Essential Duties:

• Review and analyze complex fraud alerts, suspicious transactions, and elevated account activity across deposit and payment channels.
• Conduct deep analysis of transactional patterns, account behavior, relationship history, channel activity, and system data to identify fraud indicators.
• Handle complex fraud cases involving higher loss exposure, linked accounts, repeat fraud, ATO indicators, check fraud, scam activity, or unusual customer behavior.
• Apply advanced risk-based decision-making to determine when to restrict, monitor, escalate, or take other action within defined authority.
• Document detailed case findings, rationale, mitigation steps, customer contact efforts, and escalation actions with heightened accuracy and completeness.
• Identify indicators of organized fraud activity, repeat victimization, internal control gaps, or systemic risk requiring broader review.
• Escalate cases requiring full investigative review, expanded analysis, or law-enforcement-level inquiry to Fraud Investigators or management.
• Serve as a subject-matter resource for Fraud Prevention Analysts on complex cases, workflows, and judgment calls.
• Support quality control, procedural consistency, and documentation standards for higher-risk case handling.
• Partner with Deposit Operations, Branch Administration, Info Security, Physical Security, Risk, and other internal teams to resolve elevated fraud matters.
• Contribute to fraud trend analysis, workflow refinement, and process improvements.
• Maintain advanced awareness of emerging fraud typologies, complex scam activity, and evolving risk patterns.

Ancillary Duties:

As an integral member of the Fraud Operations Department, this position is also responsible to provideassistance wherever necessary to help the Security Department and the Bank in achieving their annualgoals.

Education, Training and Requirements:

• Associates degree in Criminal Justice, Business, Finance, Accounting, Risk Management, or a related field preferred; equivalent professional experience may be considered
• 3-5 years of experience in fraud operations, fraud prevention, banking operations, Deposit Operations, fraud investigations support, or related financial services functions.
• Experience handling elevated fraud cases, suspicious activity review, transactional risk analysis, and customer-impacting fraud mitigation
• All Applicants must be 18 years of age or older.

Skills:

• Strong understanding of deposit and payment fraud, including check fraud, debit card fraud, digital banking fraud, scam typologies, account takeover, and suspicious account behavior.
• Strong analytical ability and pattern recognition skills across transactional and account activity.
• Ability to independently assess more complicated or higher-risk fraud matters and determine proper disposition or escalation.
• Strong written documentation and case rationale skills.
• Effective communication skills across operational, service, and frontline teams.
• Strong judgment, organizational ability, and capacity to manage multiple high-priority matters simultaneously.
• Ability to recognize trends, repeat behavior, and linked suspicious activity warranting broader review.
• Ability to support and guide less experienced staff on higher-risk case handling.

Experience:

• Prior experience with fraud systems, case management platforms, transaction monitoring tools, and banking core systems.
• Relevant certifications such as CFE, CAMS, CFCS, APRP, or similar credentials.
• Experience with deposit and payment fraud, digital banking risk, scam typologies, and investigative documentation strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with fraud loss mitigation strategies, scam typologies, and account behavior analytics.

Hours: 40 hours a week

Compensation: Commensurate with experience plus potential for annual merit increase. In addition to your competitive salary, you will be rewarded benefits including: 11 paid holidays, paid vacation, Medical, Vision & Dental insurance, 401K with generous match, Pension, Tuition Reimbursement, Banking discounts and the list goes on!

Physical Requirements:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee may be required to stand, walk or sit. Use hands and fingers, handle or feel, reach with hands or arms, and speak and hear. The employee may occasionally be required to lift and or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, and the ability to focus.

The Company is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

The Company will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with a disability. If you have a physical or mental impairment and would like to request an accommodation with respect to the application process, please contact the Human Resources Department.