Saturday wrapped up Fraud Week, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) international week of anti-fraud awareness. We are extremely proud to have joined hundreds of organizations around the world to support this effort.
The risk of organizational fraud is much higher than many managers and leaders realize, as shown in the Report to the Nations research series sponsored by the ACFE. With a median loss of $145,000 in cases reported in 2013, fraud presents a risk to all organizations comparable to any other human risk factor.
In support of Fraud Week we produced several informational pieces, which are summarized here for easy reference:
This visual guide summarizes 10 key findings from the ACFE 2014 Report to the Nations and offers some tips to develop an effective fraud prevention program. Highlighted is the amazingly high incidence of fraud and counter measures that work to reduce the probability and cost of fraud. Get your copy of the guide here.
Risk Mitigator—The Fraud Week Edition
The Risk Mitigator is our monthly e-newsletter for risk managers and others concerned about organizational risk of all kinds. To honor International Fraud Awareness Week, we distributed a special edition of the newsletter highlighting some of our top fraud-related articles from 2014. These articles link prevention to the basic causal factors of fraud, and offer specific strategies and tactics organizations can use in designing prevention programs. View the special edition here.
How to Foil the Fraudster in Your Organization
Published during Fraud Week, this blog post offers tips for connecting the findings in the ACFE research with fraud detection and prevention strategies. The characteristics of fraudsters show that they will blend into the background of most organizations—they can be people at any level, with long tenure, and access to financial resources. The best response to this threat is to identify where the opportunities for fraud exist, and create controls or structures that make it harder to commit fraud and/or easier to detect.
Essential Elements of an Effective Whistle-Blower Program
One of the most striking findings in the 2014 Report to the Nations is that fully 40% of frauds were detected by a tip, often from someone within the organization. This makes a whistle-blower program almost mandatory for organizations that are serious about fraud prevention. This blog post explores the issues in designing an effective program, including how to overcome the natural reluctance of one employee to report on someone who may be a friend as well as a co-worker.
Every organization is at risk of fraud. And every organization can lower that risk with a well-structured fraud prevention program. Request a meeting with Lowers Risk Group to find out more about how your organization can fight fraud.