The workforce is the backbone of any company… but can also be its downfall. As a finance professional, it’s essential to trust your staff. You hire good people, and they do their jobs well.
This blog is about the ones that don’t.
Now, we’re not saying that all employees are out to commit fraud. Trusting workers to do their job honestly is key to making sure you can step away and focus on what matters to you. And that’s fine, especially if you’ve got the right protections in place. But more on that later.
Just think about it. Your employees spend a lot of time at work. They’re bound to be the ones that can find holes in security and fraudulent workarounds in your payment process. It’s always the ones in the know that have the power to bring a whole company to its knees.
And as ominous as that sounds, it’s not meant to be. Internal fraud can be easily avoided by implementing a few simple checks – it’s better for everyone in the long run.
The value of fraud detection?
Many companies will not readily accept that their organisation is vulnerable to fraud.
However, the issue of both internal and external fraud is extremely common. It’s so widespread that in 2017 the annual UK cost was £190 billion. That works out to around £10,000 per family. Breaking that down further, British businesses lose around £40million annually from employee fraud alone. And this could all be prevented by the simple implementation of a few extra steps in your payment software.
Stay ahead of the fraudsters with this webinar.
It’s always the ones you least expect…
That was certainly the case with the story below…
A large north-west manufacturing business was scammed to the tune of £2.8 million. The individual responsible was in her sixties and had worked at the company for over 20 years. Reliable and a familiar face around the office, her boss probably thought she was a sweet old lady that didn’t have the heart to rip anyone off. Especially not him.
Except that she was. Sneakily syphoning off money into fake accounts, she embezzled nearly £3 million in accounts dating back to 2005. It didn’t have to be this way.
Companies that have the right protections in place have the power to protect themselves. In fact, they would’ve caught her fraudulent behaviour much earlier, simply by implementing the appropriate software.
How to avoid this
By now you may be side-eyeing your staff and wondering ‘who can I actually trust?’. It’s probably true that the vast majority of your employees are reliable and honest, and 99% of them wouldn’t dream of ripping the business off – especially to the excess of those mentioned above. But here’s the million (or maybe make that £2.8million) dollar question… why give them the opportunity?
With products like AccessPay’s SecureFlow, you’re buying protection and peace of mind. For both yourself and your employees.
Using unique triggers built within the software algorithm, SecureFlow can flag unauthorised activity and detect fraud at the point of payment initiation. It spots potential threats and warns the appropriate people of any irregularities in transaction files. It can also highlight users that may have certain payment indiscretions, whether that is down to human error or something more sinister.
If applied to the case above, SecureFlow would have saved the company in question a lot of time, effort and money by alerting the businesses owners to one dishonest woman, who saw an opportunity and took it.
Want to know more?
Payment nightmares like the one mentioned above can be easily avoided with a reliable payment software such as AccessPay. But they still happen. Don’t just take our word for it.
Get in touch to learn how the AccessPay software uses segregation of duties within our software with the SecureFlow module.