Always Ahead: Building the Safest Digital Bank in America – Ally Case Study

Being an ally to our customers extends beyond finances, it’s also about fraud and security protection. At Ally, we use a combination of cutting-edge technology and industry best practices to ensure the security and safety of our customers’ personal and financial information.

Ally serves over 11 million customers across deposits, investments, auto finance, and insurance. As the largest fully digital bank in the United States and a leading auto finance provider, Ally stays vigilant to protect customers from constantly evolving threats. Industry data shows that financial institutions are targeted daily by attempts to extract hundreds of millions of dollars through fraud*. These threats are increasingly sophisticated, involving synthetic identities, automated AI-driven attacks, and coordinated fraud networks**.

According to Nasdaq’s 2024 Global Financial Crime Report, global financial fraud losses are estimated to exceed $485 billion annually*, affecting customers, institutions, and the broader financial ecosystem.

Within this context, Ally applies a “Do It Right” philosophy designed to protect customers, partners, and investors, while supporting long-term organizational stability and the consistent delivery of value.

FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE

In the past, financial crime investigations required manually piecing together data across multiple systems and product lines. It worked, but it was slow and reactive. Ally wanted to do more — and do it faster.

That world is behind Ally. Today, intelligence drives every action the organization takes. DataWalk analyzes hundreds of millions of data points every day to surface suspicious patterns and turn them into clear, actionable alerts. These alerts guide analysts directly to what matters—enabling faster investigation, informed decisions, and earlier intervention to prevent fraud and emerging threats.

FROM CHAOS TO CONTEXT

The biggest breakthrough lies in the contextual intelligence generated by Ally’s enterprise financial crime ontology and purpose-built knowledge graph for fraud and abuse. This foundation, powered by DataWalk, connects and analyzes data across customers, products, and transactions, seamlessly integrating sources like SAS, Amazon S3, and external platforms into a single, relationship-driven view of risk.

This context changes everything. With an ontology-driven graph, Ally analysts can answer the most complex questions in seconds, test ad-hoc hypotheses on the fly, and uncover hidden patterns and relationships that were previously invisible.

But context alone isn’t enough. DataWalk’s pattern detection engine, flexible search, and graph algorithms all operate on top of this unified knowledge graph — eliminating the need to orchestrate dozens of disconnected systems, databases, and pipelines, and giving Ally the flexibility, speed, and consistency they never had before.

DataWalk allowed us to bring all of our data together in one place, standardize it for the first time, and finally run true cross-business-line analysis. Before that, we were completely siloed.

~Brian La Rose
Senior Director of Technology at Ally

A SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH

A key to Ally’s success has been building a single source of truth with DataWalk, integrating data across Ally's entire portfolio. This unified view powers a 360-degree perspective enabling faster and smarter decisions.

When a red flag appears in one product line, Ally teams immediately see the full context across all channels and products. That instant visibility allows Ally to act before risks escalate — turning what could have been a fraud loss into a quickly neutralized incident.

ONE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND THE STRATEGY

DataWalk is an enterprise analytics and investigation platform that unifies graph, AI, search, and machine learning into a single composite solution. Operating at scale across hundreds of millions of data points daily, DataWalk provides the capability to surface suspicious patterns and investigative signals. In addition, DataWalk can integrate with AI agents, through their MCP framework, to securely leverage their knowledge graphs and services that can accelerate investigations and improve analyst decisions.

STAYING AHEAD OF CRIMINALS

With DataWalk, Ally's investigations stopped being just zeros and ones—it became a story waiting to be uncovered. The software enables Ally users to freely explore, connect the dots, and discover insights they never imagined existed. It empowers Ally users to turn data into trusted insights with unmatched agility, minimal IT reliance, and full compliance.

In just 19 weeks, Ally went from concept to full production. After full production, the team began identifying and taking preventative action against multiple large fraud rings — saving millions and proving that this was more than just a new tool.

Ally's mission now is to stay not just one step ahead of criminals, but three. That’s why Ally is exploring decision automation for high-volume, low-complexity cases and in advanced technologies like large language models and Agentic AI.

These tools don’t replace Ally’s experts — they empower them and amplify their capabilities, enabling faster, sharper, and more confident decisions.

ALLY PROMISE AND THE FUTURE

As Gartner noted, Graph everywhere* and AI-driven graph analytics are critical for building operational advantage in modern banking. What remains aspirational for many institutions is now everyday practice for Ally, delivered through its DataWalk-powered graph and AI analytics platform.

Ally doesn’t just protect its customers’ assets — it creates an environment where banking can be done with complete confidence, knowing it is not just keeping up with change — it is defining it. At Ally, safety is more than a strategy; it is a promise. And with the right people, processes, and technology, Ally is not just keeping up with the future of banking — it is building it.

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

How Ally Built a Modern Fraud Intelligence Platform

Learn how Ally applied graph analytics and contextual investigation tools to uncover complex fraud networks and strengthen fraud prevention.

Read Case Study