Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
Overview: Periodically, the latest major fraud hits the headlines as other organisations sit back and watch, telling themselves that ‘it couldn’t happen here.’ But the reality is that fraud can happen anywhere. While only relatively few major frauds are picked up by the media, huge sums are lost by all kinds of businesses as a result of the high number of smaller frauds that are committed.
Surveys are regularly carried out in an attempt to estimate the true scale and cost of fraud to business and society. Findings vary, and it is diffi cult to obtain a complete picture as to the full extent of the issue, but these surveys all indicate that fraud is prevalent within organisations and remains a serious and costly problem.
The risks of fraud may only be increasing, as we see growing globalisation, more competitive markets, rapid developments in technology, and periods of economic difficulty.
Among other findings, the various surveys highlight that:
• organisations may be losing as much as 7% of their annual turnover as a result of fraud
• corruption is estimated to cost the global economy about $1.5 trillion each year
• only a small percentage of losses from fraud are recovered by organisations
• a high percentage of frauds are committed by senior management and executives
• greed is one of the main motivators for committing fraud
• fraudsters often work in the fi nance function
• fraud losses are not restricted to a particular sector or country
• the prevalence of fraud is increasing in emerging markets.
