Fraud is always with us

Even with the COVID-19 crisis dominating our thinking, fraud persists. People with unbelievable levels of immorality are taking advantage of the pandemic with new ways to steal from people and organizations who cannot afford any further losses.

For internal auditors, fraud has always been a concern.

Some nations even have regulations that require internal auditors to make the detection of fraud and the auditing of controls around fraud to be one of, if not their top priority.

But should it be?

Every year since 1996, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (the ACFE) has shared a revealing look at fraud in their Report to the Nations. It is always worth our time.

The ACFE has just released their Report to the Nations: 2020 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse.

Here are some key points:

• The results of their study are based on a global survey of Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) in 2019. In other words, this is a perspective from fraud practitioners, not business executives.
• Overall, the CFEs estimate that organizations lose about 5% of revenue to fraud each year. It is unclear in this year’s report what is included in that estimate, but in prior years it has included a variety of both monetary and…