America is quickly becoming a cashless society. Increasingly more financial transactions are done with credit cards and debit cards as opposed to dollars and cents. That is fantastic for retail companies because shoppers using plastic will buy a little bit extra, and it’s extremely convenient for shoppers as well. However, there is a danger that lurks on the fringes. Greater use of plastic opens up an opportunity for professional thieves to steal identity and use credit card information for fraudulent purchases.
Identity theft is becoming increasingly more common. Roughly 12.6 million Americans
were the victims of identity theft in 2012, with approximately $21 billion being stolen. The most common use of identity theft is for various forms of financial fraud. This doesn’t just include bank accounts or credit cards. Identity theft can also facilitate mail fraud, attempts to get tax refunds, and criminal attempts to get benefits from government social programs. Identity theft is even more serious when the stolen identity is used for drug trafficking and computer-related crimes. Any individual can request credit monitoring services from a third party, but the thief may be long gone before the final information is received.
It’s no longer sufficient for a person to just do a periodic check of his or her consumer credit reports and sometimes criminals will target a group. Legal plans can help with the prosecution of the thieves when they are caught, but too often group legal plans don’t have enough in their coverage to fully protect the consumer. The capacity to protect personal identity and safeguard the integrity of credit ratings gives peace of mind to valued workers. It shows the company is willing to offer protection to some of the most personal information an individual has, and a number of companies add this service to their group legal plans. The result is a very comprehensive, and greatly appreciated, means of employee protection.
Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services provides that little extra for companies that want to offer group legal plans and other benefits to their employees. An identity theft and credit monitoring product is available that offers daily monitoring of employee’s credit report from three of the largest credit bureaus in the United States. In addition to that, the plan offers identity theft insurance to members. Those members also have immediate access to their credit information, and when combined with the legal expertise offered by the plan, any member can successfully resolve an identity theft claim. The result is a solution that does not require hours of time normally spent on work projects.
Identity theft and credit fraud is a sad price to pay for the efficiency and convenience that computerized records and Internet access allows. Unfortunately, neither is going away anytime soon, and criminals are only getting more sophisticated in their efforts to break into an individual’s privacy. Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services offers a variety of ways in which employee sensitive companies can enhance group legal plans, taking that extra step to secure peace of mind.