Countering Fraud for Competitive Advantage presents a business case for anti-fraud measures to counter financial crime.
Among topics covered are investigations; creating an anti-fraud culture; and how to measure fraud losses. You can read a pdf of an excerpt, from the introduction, here.
As the authors argue, fraud is a business cost like staff, capital, and marketing. “All organisations suffer from fraud, even if they think they don’t because there have been no detected frauds. Most frauds by their nature are undetected, and fraud costs money. Because of the lack of accurate measurement, it is the last great cost many organisations unknowingly have, which could also be substantially reduced. In the commercial sector this could reap a competitive advantage, and in the increasingly financially strained public sector, it could stave off cuts in services.”
The book looks at the ways of reaping a new competitive advantage by reducing the hidden (and oft-ignored) cost of fraud. Aimed at business and based on research, it argues that fraud is responsible for losses of up to nine percent of revenues—sometimes more. Yet, most organisations don’t believe they have a problem and don’t always measure fraud losses. Hence an area for capturing a competitive advantage—with the right counter-fraud strategy, losses due to the cost of fraud can be reduced, for a fraction of the return.
As the authors write in the introduction: “There are some organisations which don’t even compile regular statis- tics on detected frauds, because they are seen as unusual and rare. Others do use statistics, but focus on detected frauds. Such measures are flawed because many frauds are undetected and many go on for a long time before they are detected. Our research shows that average losses from fraud and error are around five per cent.”
Jim Gee is the former head of the NHS counter-fraud and security management service. Mark Button, pictured, is director of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies, at Portsmouth University. A hardback, it’s published by Wiley and costs £34.99. Visit http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1119994748.html
