Internal fraud plagues nearly half of large Canadian companies

Nearly half of large Canadian companies say employees have attempted to defraud their organization, according to a SAS/Leger Marketing survey.
SAS/Leger Marketing polled more than 1,000 Canadian executives earlier this year. It found 48% of large companies have faced fraud attempts by employees and 35% of mid-size companies report facing internal fraud issues.
Only four per cent of people committing fraud at large companies escaped being caught, whereas 10% of employees who committed fraud at mid-sized companies eluded detection.
More than two-thirds of fraudsters were tracked down after the fraud occurred (74% and 69%, respectively for large and mid-sized companies).
In roughly one in six cases (14% at large companies and 16% at mid-sized) the company identified the fraud attempt and stopped it before it could occur.
Customer-perpetrated fraud ranked high on executives’ radar, too. Nearly half of the executives at large firms and 30% at mid-sized companies reported facing this type of fraud.
Financial executives were most likely to report customer fraud (59%), exceeded by food and retail executives (60%) and followed by government executives (44%).
Thirty per cent of finance companies used business analytics software to help detect fraud.
“There needs to be a paradigm shift where the focus is on catching fraud before it occurs rather than tracking it down after,” said Wes Gill, executive leader of Enterprise Risk Management with SAS Canada.
“While diligence and perseverance help, technology is the key,” he said. “Business analytics software can identify fraud as it is evolving, helping companies identify it before it has actually occurred.”