Data from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau shows that victims of investment fraud, lose a staggering £84,604. Losses to victims of repeated non-investment fraud are a shocking £21,121 each. These are life-changing crimes with long-lasting financial and emotional impacts.
These are huge numbers, and no business can afford a reputation of allowing fraud to happen. Either they will be targeted by fraudsters or their customers will leave for services they trust more. Either way, the business model will be fatally undermined.
How do you, as a business leader create a culture that protects customers and your organisation from fraud?
RTG Commercial Services always recommend starting with understanding your current position. As a leadership team, ask yourselves three core questions:
Is your business protecting itself and your customers from fraud?
Are you confident that you have the correct processes and reporting in place to prevent, detect and recover from fraud?
Do your processes link up with HR for internal fraud and IT Operations for externally instigated fraud?
If you can honestly answer 'yes' to these three questions - well done. But are you sure? Research consistently shows that businesses are poor at responding to and learning form fraud, with PWC highlighting that only 56% of businesses investigated their worst fraud incidents.
It is possible to address these areas quickly and cost-effectively. There are plenty of tools and services available to improve your position. Investing in these tools and services makes financial sense. The same research identified that organisations that invest in fraud tools and programmes spent 42% less on responding to fraud and 17% less on remediation. Here are some useful resources to consider.
CIFAS provide a range of fraud training programmes through their Fraud and Cyber Academy.
Counter Fraud Investigators can now complete a funded Level 4 apprenticeship available from four training providers.
IASME provides independent certification of organisational counter fraud controls that meet the standard of the Counter Fraud Fundamentals Scheme.
In order to know which of these is going to provide the most benefit, you really should start with a gap analysis. RTG Commercial Services can work with you to understand your current counter fraud posture and develop an effective counter fraud strategy for your organisation. If you want to know where to start, I'd suggest in oder:
Prepare
Identify and assess your fraud risks
Implement appropriate governance and monitoring
Respond
Investigate all fraud events
Analyse all processes and areas for improvement
Monitor and measure impact
Set KPIs and fraud targets for your organisation
Monitor and measure performance
If you would like professional advice and support for each of these aspects, contact us - we'd be only too happy to help!