This year’s report highlights how the continued growth of procurement fraud remains a problem for many businesses. Most often it is the employees who are instrumental in procurement fraud and therefore vigilance and appropriately vetting staff should be a high priority for all businesses. Making sure you employ the right people and that your existing staff members, particularly those in positions of responsibility, are not under duress will help you avoid potentially costly losses.
Also interesting is that the report shows that Pension fraud is growing in the public sector, and while there are no published figures for the private sector, it’s understood that fraudsters are targeting the Pensions Release (where pension holders, aged over 55, are allowed to withdraw up to 100% of their pension benefits as a cash lump sum, income or a combination of both).
It’s worth noting that whilst the volume of fraud is low, the value of fraud losses is high, suggesting fraudsters are focusing their attention on the biggest value areas.
Consumers need to be careful of investment opportunities that are potentially too good to be true. Pension companies need to ensure their ID verification tools are both best in class and cost effective to execute as the pensions release is predicted to continue to grow.
In the finance sector, plastic card and online banking fraud continues to increase. A new regulation in 2018, in the form of Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), will enforce more robust ID and Fraud controls on online payments to address this. Essentially it will make it much harder for a fraudster to use a victim’s payment card online unless they also get control of their online banking details too.
The regulation should result in a significant decline in plastic card fraud, giving an increase in detected and prevented frauds a result.
Should you want to read the full report, you can get your copy here.