As treasury, finance, and A/P employees across nearly every industry sector are working from home, and as U.S. government leaders consider their options for a fifth stimulus package to bolster the Covid-19 economy, fraud is an increasingly top-of-mind concern.

A Deloitte poll of more than 1,200 C-suite executives found that:

• More than half of respondents (51 percent) expect the number and size of fraud, waste, and abuse schemes perpetrated against their organization to increase in the next 12 months. Only 3 percent expect fraud to decrease.
• Nearly 40 percent expect those schemes to come in the form of improper payments, while 15 percent expect to experience more financial reporting and disclosure fraud, 15 percent anticipate an uptick in embezzlement, and 11 percent think they will see more corruption and kickbacks over the next year.
• Perhaps most surprising, 28 percent of respondents expect the fraud to be perpetrated by current employees. Nearly 10 percent think their current vendors will the source of the schemes, and another 13 percent expect either former employees or former vendors to initiate fraud. Only 24 percent are most afraid of the fraud, waste, and abuse risk posed by individuals with no employment or vendor ties to their company.

"Despite the heightened awareness of fraud, some executives may be too confident in their ability to fight it," warns Don Fancher, global forensic leader for Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory. When companies fail to use security technologies that monitor corporate transactions in an automated way, it is "hard to quickly identify and remediate issues, especially in today's environment, where bad actors may be more inclined to take advantage of various business-aid packages or vulnerabilities in organizations' systems," Fancher adds.

 See also:

• Combating CARES Act Fraud
• Remote Work Presents Risks to Proprietary Information
• 5 Steps to Protect Your Business Amid Economic Uncertainty