Why the future of fraud prevention might need to be a lean, mean fighting machine
“We’ve seen many corporates lose millions to fraud, and then spend further millions trying to recoup what they’ve lost, when an insignificant upfront investment in fraud prevention would likely have detected the issue”
There are endless reports of the tidal wave of fraud that has emerged, and will emerge, from Covid-19, so fraud prevention is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, right? The truth is it is not.
Organisations are in turmoil – budgets set in January are a distant
memory, supply chains are under significant pressure, employees are on furlough (particularly those in classic control functions), and cash flow is critical. That means investment in traditional back-office functions is minimal. Businesses do not usually spend money on prevention in times of crisis – not when they are struggling to pay staff and suppliers. So, what is the answer.
The Spartans of ancient Greece created a focused fighting force, trained in the latest fighting techniques and capable, with a small army, of defeating a much larger enemy. Corporates should consider something similar: engage and invest in a chosen few to become fraud risk specialists, empowered to leverage the workforce internally and data externally, and keep abreast of the latest fraud trends, to become your corporate defence. By leveraging the data available to you internally, and mining it intellectually, those Spartans with laptops might just be your saving grace.
Howard Cooper and Zoë Newman (managing directors and co-heads of financial investigations at Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps) explain more – to read their thoughts please click on the download llink above.