The Southbourne Tax Group Strengthening Internal Controls to Prevent Fraud

Fraud is often not detected until after the crime has been committed. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the average time it takes to identify fraud is 18 months after the fact. Furthermore, roughly 58% of fraud cases have no recovery whatsoever. 1 This statistic is chilling, as it indicates that many organizations fall victim to significant loss with slight hope of financial repossession, regardless of fraud detection and response measures. Many times, business owners decide to accept the risk as they don’t want to pump additional resources into additional staff or other control-related activities (such as additional internal audits). However, it’s important to understand what you do have control over along with some relatively simple, yet critical controls to implement.