But most fraudsters caught: Survey
Forty-eight per cent of executives at large Canadian companies say employees have attempted to defraud their organization, along with 35 per cent of mid-sized company executives. But workers who attempt fraud are very likely to be caught, according to a survey of 1,022 Canadian executives.
Only four per cent of executives at large companies and 10 per cent of executives at mid-sized companies said employees who committed fraud escaped being caught, found the survey by business analytics software and services firm SAS Canada. More than two-thirds of the fraudsters were tracked down after the fraud occurred and in about one in six cases (14 per cent at large companies, 16 per cent at mid-sized), the company identified the fraud attempt and stopped it before it could occur.
Fraud attempts varied by industry, as 55 per cent of food and retail executives said an employee had attempted to defraud their company compared to government and finance executives (46 per cent) and professional consulting, real estate and legal firms (23 per cent).
“As the survey results indicate, certain industries are more affected by fraudulent activities than others," said Wes Gill, executive lead of enterprise risk management at SAS Canada. "Though many organizations can benefit from the use of business analytics to detect fraud, the one concern I have from these results is that government, third highest in terms of customer fraud attempts and second highest in terms of employee fraud attempts, is not a big user of technology designed to detect fraud."
