Fraud and the need for greater cyber security measures remains high on the agenda for financial decision makers, according to a report of 400 financial decision makers including business owners and CFOs – from small businesses to enterprises employing over 10,000 employees. However, it found a dramatic shift in the level of concern around different types of financial fraud, compared to last year’s results.
The worry over internal fraud has experienced a significant 138% relative year-on-year increase. Over 30% of financial decision makers expressed concern over fraud committed by internal staff, compared with just 13% in 2016.
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External fraud remains a bigger concern for financial decision makers this year, with 56% of respondents naming external cyber fraud as a concern – compared to 37% in 2016.
The report also found that of those financial decision makers that were certain they had been impacted by fraud (12%), 17% estimated that 10% or more of their company’s revenue had been affected – down from 36% from 2016.
While the number of companies experiencing over 10% of revenue impacted by fraud is on decline, the report suggested that more businesses could be falling victim to smaller, parasitic scams. Indeed, 68% of respondents claimed that up to 10% of their company’s revenue had been affected – a 28% increase from last year.
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Most concerning is that 56% of respondents simply did not know whether they had been impacted by finance fraud or not.
“It is important for organisations to have robust measures to prevent loss due to error and fraud, in particular, ensuring payments are being made to correct suppliers – not fraudsters”, said Ed Adshead-Grant, general manager, payments at Bottomline Technologies.
The report found that one in four corporates are using blacklists for anti-money laundering sanction filtering, which potentially leaves three in four firms subject to significant penalties and sanctions.
Adshead-Grant continued, “Account validation and verification measures are easy to plug in and use on the vendor database, rather than at the point of payment submission, to help identify errors and international frauds earlier in the process.”
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Bottomline Technologies has warned companies that they need to ensure they have the correct security measures and awareness in place to protect them as much as possible against all types of internal and external payment fraud.
“No-one can be complacent. Companies have a duty of care for customers and suppliers that they have the correct security measures to protect their payments and financial processes”, concluded Ed Adshead-Grant.
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