Mitigating fraud in financial services

Fraudulent activity surging 

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has reported that 5 million fraud offences were committed in the year ending June 2021: A 32% increase compared to 2019. Despite the prevalence of fraud across the country, some corporates including financial institutions believe that criminal behaviour isn’t something that they need to respond to. As a result, criminal elements often go overlooked putting the company, its employees and their customers at risk.  

Reputational and financial cost of fraud 

Corporate fraud in fintechs and financial service providers can include contractor fraud, financial crimes - such as money laundering and market manipulation - and wage replacement program fraud to name a few. All these types of fraud can cost an organisation its reputation and financial loss.  

Through examining emails and attachments, documents on file shares, text messages, recordings of phone calls or voicemails, and external sources such as social media and visits to forum sites - organisations can build up a picture of what is normal to benchmark against criminal behaviours. However, some corporations struggle to gather evidence of fraudulent activities due to the lack of investment in digital forensic technologies and the implementation of manual data collection processes.  

Protecting your employees and customers 

To protect a company holistically, it is imperative that fraud is immediately reported upon identification. To do so, companies need to have the right capabilities in place, working in collaboration with government and law enforcement agencies. The key is not only to prevent and detect fraud but to gather and secure evidence for successful prosecution.

Being able to identify fraud instantly protects both employees and customers alike. Through harnessing digital forensic technologies to accelerate the process of analysing data and documentation, companies can assimilate the nature and trace the causal link of the fraud to the perpetrator.