Just as technology and automation continue to get more sophisticated, so too do those who commit fraud. Despite having automated controls in place, fraud continues to represent over $7 billion in losses annually.

The release of the latest ACFE Global Study on occupational fraud and abuse highlighted the key areas where issues arose. There were some interesting statistics shared.

• Internal control weaknesses were responsible for nearly half of reported fraud cases.
  • The primary internal control weakness was a lack of controls, which represented the cause in 30% of cases.​​
• How is occupational fraud initially detected? 40% via a tip, Internal Audit found 15% of cases, and only 1% were detected by Internal Controls
• How much does occupational fraud cost the victim organisation? In 22% of cases, the loss represents $1 million or more.
• Accounting and purchasing departments are the common victims of fraud with a combined contribution of 20% of fraud cases.
• 11% of those who committed fraud were no longer with the organisation – highlighting issues in the joiners/movers/leavers process

The report goes into great detail about how fraud is currently affecting organisations across size, industry and geography.

We highly recommend giving it a read for some useful benchmarking as well as a fraud protection checklist.

You can find the report here