What is happening and what’s changing?
Whether it is happening as a result of these activities or vica versa, over the last few years we have increasingly been seeing: -
- Academia developing fraud courses and fraud qualifications.
- More and more people with these qualifications, more higher level qualifications and higher levels of knowledge and experience.
- More new fraud products available to businesses rather than the ‘odd one or two’ – albeit many are still transient in nature.
- More counter-fraud officers being recruited and in several sectors e.g. insurance sector and DSS
- New legislation in the form of the Fraud Bill and Social Security Data Sharing Bill, with further legislative change ‘on the stocks’.
- Growth in the businesses of fraud support organisations such as forensic accountants, investigators and accountancy firms, lawyers and other professionals with specialist fraud units.
- The government Fraud Review, the ACPO review of the fraud levels, a consultation on the review and a response, an FSA consultation paper, and some serious work carried out by many trade bodies as a result or otherwise.
There is still a long way to go, including the wider acceptance by senior executives of the need to employ fraud specialists, widescale data-sharing to find cross-industry and cross-sector fraudsters; greater measurement of fraud, and the development of more co-ordinated strategy across sectors. |
