Fighting fraud: A never-ending battle
Fraud rates remain at record highs - are you prepared to fight it off?
Judging from the news reports, fraud seems to be everywhere. Our latest global survey of fraud and economic crime suggests this isn’t far from the truth. We surveyed more than 5,000 respondents across 99 territories about their experience of fraud over the past 24 months. Asking things like whether they’d been hit by fraud. How many times. What type. And what they’d done to prevent it happening again.
Nearly half had suffered at least one fraud. The most common types were customer fraud, cybercrime, and asset misappropriation. And there was a roughly even split between frauds committed by internal and external perpetrators, at almost 40% each – with the rest being mostly collusion between the two.
Rudy Hoskens, Partner, PwC Belgium
Customer fraud, cybercrime and asset misappropriation remain the most committed types of crime. This was already confirmed in the latest 2020 CEO Survey where 71% of Belgian CEOs see cyber attacks as a threat to their organisation's growth prospects. Almost one third (29%) of them are even 'extremely concerned' about cyber threats. Reacting too slowly can not only cause more immediate damage, it can cascade into a broader crisis.
“Organisations in Belgium are becoming increasingly aware that fraud and economic crime is a never ending battle. With a number of high-profile cybercrime cases in recent months affecting businesses in Belgium, it is clear that this type of crime has become an issue that cannot be ignored. As an increasing portion of economic activity moves online, cybercrime has moved from obscurity to the spotlight of consumer, corporate and national security concerns”. Rudy Hoskens, Partner, PwC Belgium
Fraud hits companies from all angles - the perpetrator could be internal, external or in many instances there is collusion. In the last two years, 39% of respondents said external perpetrators were the main source of their economic crime incidents. One in five respondents cited vendors/suppliers as the source of their most disruptive external fraud.
13% of respondents who experienced fraud in the last two years reported losing more than 45.8 million euros (US$50 million). Antitrust, insider trading, tax fraud, money laundering, and bribery and corruption are reported as being the top five costliest frauds in terms of direct losses - sometimes compounded by the significant cost of remediation.