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.
Lori Daugherty is Chief Executive Officer at Ascellus where she provides analytical decision-making, strategic planning and executive leadership. As CEO with more than 30 years of experience, she is focused on developing best practices for organizational processes, performance measurement systems and building Ascellus’ infrastructure to maximize the company’s growth.
Jeff is a founding member of Informed Consulting. He has 25+ plus years of employee benefits experience working with enterprise employers, digital health companies, health plans, insurance carriers, InsureTech, HCM, and financial wellness companies.
Via Informed Consulting, Jeff served as the CRO (Seed Round, Series A, and Series B) at Nayya. He held various sales leadership positions in 12 years at Benefitfocus, a benefits administration company. At Benefitfocus, Jeff developed an ecosystem distribution market for early-stage digital health and financial wellness companies. Prior to Benefitfocus, Jeff worked for health plans and insurance carriers for 13 years.
Jeff was named by Employee Benefits Advisor as “30 Benefit Thought Leaders to Know” and “30 People to watch in Benefits 2017”. Jeff has been featured in CNBC, Inc Magazine, Forbes, Employee Benefits News, US News and World Report, SHRM Magazine, and numerous other publications.
Julia Hu is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Lark. Founded on the personal experience of having grown up with an undiagnosed chronic condition, Julia is passionate about bringing compassionate care to those preventing or managing chronic disease. Hu was named to Business Insider’s 30 Under 40 Changing Healthcare list and was awarded as a member of the UCSF Health Awards Hall of Fame in 2021, as well as the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ North America Class of 2021. Prior to founding Lark in 2011, Julia ran global startup incubator, the Clean Tech Open, built a sustainable construction startup, and was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Stanford’s StartX incubator. She is on the board of the Council for Diabetes Prevention and a Singularity University faculty member. Hu received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at Stanford University and half of an MBA from MIT Sloan before founding Lark.
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.
