Fraud is continuing to increase this year, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
The report found that 79 percent of anti-fraud professionals have seen an increase in the overall level of fraud as of November, compared to 77 percent in August and 68 percent in May. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents said in November the increase has been significant, compared to 34 percent in August and 25 percent in May.
Douglas Dell is Vice President – Executive Leader Learning & Development for Sedgwick. An accomplished leader in training, talent development and learning ecosystems, he is currently creating and implementing L&D for Sedgwick Property Americas spanning early career programs for apprentices and interns to the next generation and focused on advanced managerial, technical, and executive leadership including career paths and learning journeys. He concurrently manages the commercial learning services of Vale Training and Consulting Services, supporting technical skills for insurance adjusting and estimating professionals, skills assessments, professional certifications, and continuing education. Formerly, he held learning leadership roles at Crawford & Company, NCR and Philips Healthcare. Previously, he was the board advisor and Chairman of the Atlanta chapter of the Association for Talent Development and a member of the graduate faculty for the University of Phoenix; and a current board member of EVTEC - a certification standard for Electric Vehicle technicians and estimators.
Charles C. Roberts, Jr. is president of C. Roberts Consulting Engineers, Inc. (http://www.croberts.com). He has a bachelors degree, masters degree and a Ph.D. in engineering. He has worked as a consulting engineer in the area of accident reconstruction and failure analysis since 1976. He has published several books and articles on accident reconstruction, failure analysis and history.
Wilbur Swan is the CEO of Catchlight, a software startup incubated within Fidelity Labs, where he serves as a managing director.
Prior to Fidelity, he led commercialization of the Thomson Reuters enterprise data and AI platform and was a co-founder of ContactNet, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters. He is an accomplished speaker, innovator and thought leader at the intersection of technology, data and artificial intelligence.
Cyber fraud, payment fraud (such as schemes with debit and credit cards) and identity theft are the three top fraud schemes seeing increases, according to anti-fraud professionals.
The largest increase in observed fraud was in financial statement fraud, with 7 percent more anti-fraud professionals reported seeing financial statement fraud in November, compared to August. That could be because as companies continue to see their profits drop, they feel more pressure to cook the books.
The survey also found 77 percent of anti-fraud professionals report that investigating and preventing fraud is more challenging now, while 71 percent said detecting fraud is more challenging as a result of the pandemic.
ACFE members anticipate the fraud trend will continue, even as vaccines have begun rolling out this week in the U.S. Ninety percent of the survey respondents expect a further increase in the level of fraud over the next 12 months, with 44 percent predicting the change is likely to be significant.
Nearly half (48 percent) of the organizations polled expect to increase their investments in anti-fraud technology, and 38 percent intend to raise the use of fraud-related consultants or other external resources. Budgets for anti-fraud training and professional development are experiencing a similar increase (according to 37 percent of the organizations polled), but nearly one-quarter (24 percent) anticipate a decrease in this area. The budget component most likely to see decreases is travel for anti-fraud staff, which shouldn’t be surprising given the plunging levels of air travel in general over this past year, with 38 percent of the survey respondents expecting a reduction in funds for travel in the year ahead.
