Veda Advantage Acquires Card Alert and EKKO Guardian Business

Veda Advantage today announced its subsidiary business Secure Sentinel has acquired the business and membership base of secure registration service provider Card Alert and its sister company, EKKO Guardian.  

These strategic acquisitions follow Veda Advantage’s purchase of loss assistance and retrieval specialists, Secure Sentinel, in May 2009 and will complement and expand the company’s consumer identity protection services.

Veda Advantage CEO, Rory Matthews, says the acquisition of Card Alert will provide consumers with leading loss assistance and secure registration services as well as services to aid with the detection of identity theft.

“Combining the functionality of the Card Alert and EKKO Guardian products with those currently provided by Secure Sentinel will provide Veda Advantage customers with the opportunity to access best practice identity protection. This includes the ability to register their most important financial information in one secure location, receive assistance in the event of loss, and help customers to detect identity crime by receiving electronic alerts of any changes to their credit file,” he said.

Card Alert and EKKO Guardian’s members will be offered full membership of Secure Sentinel, bringing the number of members using Secure Sentinel’s products to almost 400,000.  

Secure Sentinel national manager, Fahrena Mitchelson, said: “Card Alert and EKKO Guardian customers will be offered an upgrade to premium Secure Sentinel membership status.  Over the next few months Secure Sentinel membership kits will be sent to all Card Alert and EKKO Guardian members, providing new contact information, luggage tags, key tags and information required to register for the Secure Identity alert service.  In the meantime, members do not need to change any of their details and it will be business as usual for all Card Alert and EKKO Guardian customers.”

The Secure Sentinel service provides loss assistance and retrieval services for financial cards, mobile phones, documents and personal valuables in one package. The premium Secure Identity product can trigger a notice to a member when an application for credit is made in their name and is registered on the Veda Advantage credit bureau, alerting the member to potentially fraudulent credit applications and helping to detect identity theft.

Secure Sentinel’s Secure Identity product includes:

• Supplying a single dedicated 24-hour hotline for members to call from anywhere in the world to:

1. cancel and arrange reissue of financial cards
2. cancel and receive assistance with the reissue of Australian passports
3. receive assistance with cancellation of New Zealand and other passports

• Providing members with written notification of passports that are due to expire;
• Temporarily blocking the usage of mobile phones;
• Arranging emergency cash advances;
• Assisting with key and luggage return;
• Notifying participating service providers of a change of address so that details can be updated from a single source, reducing the threat of identity theft;
• Providing members with a current copy of their credit file and alerting them via email when there is a change to the contents of their credit file.