How can you prevent fraud efficiently?
On 19 November 2019, De Tijd ran the telling headline “Fraud costs companies 200,000 euros on average”.
A survey conducted by the consultancy firm BDO among more than 200 Belgian companies revealed that small family businesses and SMEs, as well as large multinationals, have to deal with corporate fraud much more often than is generally assumed. Moreover, the damages they report having suffered are quite high, averaging 200,000 euros on an annual basis.
It is worrying that this figure is set against a background where fewer cases of fraud are being reported, which logically means that the scale of each case of fraud has increased.
Our fraud department also notes in its daily practice that the fraud uncovered at our clients is increasingly well organised, and is aimed at causing major damage in the short term. However, we often find that the focus of anti-fraud measures is mainly on preventing fraud from the outside (so-called external fraud). When company directors are asked what they can do against fraud, they often refer to the efforts they make to improve their IT security. Such systems primarily prevent the intrusion of third parties into the company.
Academic literature shows, however, that most offences are not committed by strangers, but by people in your immediate environment. Translated to the business world, this means that the greatest risk of fraud lies with those you work with on a daily basis: staff, management, suppliers, … . This also came to light in the BDO survey, which showed that the corporate fraud uncovered was committed by employees of the company in no less than 45% of cases.
You do not keep internal fraud out simply by improving the security of your IT system, but rather by ensuring that both preventive and repressive measures are taken against corporate fraud within your company. Our fraud department will gladly assist you with this, based on our years of experience in various large and small companies.
What can we do for you?
First of all, we will check with you where you currently stand in terms of fraud prevention: by means of a short fraud audit, we will look at what you can already do today to combat fraud.
Based on our fraud audit, we will advise you on what can be improved, and if desired, we will guide you in implementing the steps we propose (writing or adapting a fraud policy, adapting the employment regulations, implementing an email and internet policy, GDPR check, …).
It is important here, both in terms of legal enforceability and fraud prevention, that this process takes place transparently. In this way, you immediately create fraud awareness within your company, so that your staff and management understand that the company pays attention to corporate fraud and will take strict action against it.
Would you like more information about this? Feel free to contact us.