Fraud Study 2025: Expert Insights from Lee-Ann Perkins on Combatting Payment Fraud

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In a recent survey conducted with finance professionals across the United States, Trustpair uncovered critical insights into the evolving fraud landscape. From the rising prevalence of cyber fraud and AI-driven scams to the financial repercussions of payment fraud, the study sheds light on the most pressing challenges for businesses today. The report also reveals a significant confidence gap in fraud detection among US finance leaders, highlighting the need for enhanced strategies and solutions to mitigate risks effectively.

In a recent conversation with Lee-Ann Perkins, Global Treasurer at Ankura Consulting, we explore her expert perspective on these trends and the critical measures companies must adopt to protect their financial and reputational assets.

Discover actionable recommendations and expert analysis in our latest US Fraud Report. Download it now to stay ahead of fraud trends and safeguard your organization!

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1. 95% of US companies were targeted at least once last year by payment fraud, and 92% were targeted multiple times. 38% of companies were targeted more than 10 times last year. Do these numbers surprise you?

What explains such a rise – especially when it comes to companies getting targeted multiple times? I wish it did surprise me, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. This is something we’re dealing with daily in the treasury and payment space. It makes me nervous that these are the numbers because it’s almost guaranteed if you’re a company you’ll be targeted.

And looking at that last result – 38% targeted more than 10 times – companies really have to take the full measure of this phenomenon and have to take it seriously.

Fraudulent activity is now a really good economic venture for fraudsters – and that’s even more visible with the average financial loss. Fraud wouldn’t be so successful if it wasn’t paying well and it wasn’t easy to perpetrate.

The high figures can be linked to the evolving fraud tactics that are out there. AI and generative AI are a fantastic use case in companies, particularly in treasury: they offer many benefits.

But with something good, there’s always something more sinister on the other side. And I believe this is what explains these more repetitive and higher numbers of frauds that are being perpetrated against companies.

Fraud tactics are evolving and our teams don’t necessarily understand or know how to combat or even detect them. Unfortunately, faced with these evolving tactics, we’re seeing a lack of controls, a lack of training, and an overall lack of resources in companies.

2. The next figures focus on cyber fraud: 95% of companies indicated that fraud attempts in 2024 were linked to cyber fraud. In 2023, this number was 83%: once again we’re observing a huge rise here. Is this something that you see on the ground as a treasurer?

It’s something I and fellow treasurers definitely see. Fraud attempts are more sophisticated. There are no more incorrect spelling and grammar mistakes. There’s a change in the way fraudsters are coming at us.

And it’s something that I also see in my personal life. Fraudsters are trying to get me to log into my bank account, or onto platforms I use every day.

Every day it’s a repetition of smart and sophisticated cyber crimes using top technologies. Old-fashioned frauds like check fraud are still happening in the US but they don’t have the same dollar value as cyber crime.

What’s very concerning is that it’s happening so much faster than what we originally planned. AI and ChatGPT are now open to everyone and so easy to use: they’ve been adopted really quickly by fraudsters – much more quickly than what we could’ve predicted.

3. When we asked the respondents what their level of self-confidence was in terms of spotting cyber fraud, 59% said they felt very confident in their ability to spot cyber fraud. Isn’t that a paradox: they feel very confident but yet are still getting defrauded? How can we explain this?

This is a very interesting statistic. We all think that we’re good at spotting fraud and it’s never going to happen to us, particularly if you work in the treasury or payment space.

We feel like this is an area that we should be good at and we’re not going to be subject to these types of attacks, which is probably why respondents indicated they feel so confident. But clearly, this isn’t what the data is showing us.

And of course, some of these fraud tactics have been around for a long time and we’re familiar with them. But the newer fraud tactics that are coming at us: these are the ones we should be worried about and the ones we shouldn’t be confident about.

Corporations need to take a step back and realize it’s a race between sophisticated fraudsters and the technology that’s available to us. We need to be ahead, it’s the only way we’ll tackle the threat.

It’s up to us to be vigilant and suspicious of anything out of the ordinary: changes in banking coordinates, unusual payment requests, etc. We don’t have the right to be that confident, seeing the number and dollar value of fraud that is happening to us.

4. Speaking about the dollar value, if we move on to the consequences of fraud, the numbers are quite striking once again. 87% of companies that were targeted by successful fraud lost more than $1 million vs 36% the year before. And 49% lost more than $10 million in average. Why do you think the average financial loss has risen so much?

These are scary numbers and the dollar value is huge.

It’s my belief that this rise is once again linked to AI and cyber fraud. These technologies make it much easier to move large amounts of money quickly, compared to traditional check schemes or in-person frauds. These had smaller dollar values and took a longer time to happen.

But with cybercrime and the advent of real-time payments, it’s amazing how quickly money can change hands and is gone for good. I think this is why we’re seeing such large dollar values: just because it’s all become so easy to happen.

And as a treasurer, I love technology. I love that we have real-time payments. But at the same time, it comes with a lot of potential risk and large dollar values.

5. If we have a look at the other impacts of fraud, we have damaged reputations with customers and investors as top consequences. Does this surprise you? Do you think reputational impacts can have effects that are as long-lasting as financial losses?

Oh, absolutely. And particularly with public companies. Public companies have more scrutiny, as well as legal requirements to report these incidents to investors. In some ways, reputation damage is dollar value that you can’t directly quantify.

Once you’ve damaged your reputation with customers or investors, it’s really hard to build that back up and start again, to bring customers back to you.

And as consumers, I think we’re all getting this type of fatigue: it seems like every month we hear about some company that’s lost our personal data, or that’s been hacked. At this point, we all probably have personal information that’s out there.

In the end, it’s not only about the bottom line for a company: it’s about how customers feel about you, how they relate to you, and how the information they give you is respected and safeguarded.

So it’s quite obvious that companies need to be concerned with reputation, on top of dollar value.

6. If we have a look at what other risks executives are concerned with and what other risks can lead to payment fraud, we see that executives are most concerned about cyber vulnerabilities, geopolitical uncertainty, and economic volatility. How do you think these broader risks are connected to payment fraud? How do they pave the way to fraudsters?

With economic uncertainty, people are more fearful and resources are stretched thin. It gets easier to get under employees’ skin and manipulate them to do what you want them to do. Companies and employees are under pressure – their bottom line is often quite different from what investors expect and making mistakes or getting manipulated is unfortunately more frequent.

Emotionally, it’s easier to get to employees during economic uncertainty, when companies are under-resourced and over-pressured.

Because you have fewer resources available, you might take less time to think about all the details and processes you should respect. You don’t go through all the essential steps and controls for payment processes. And this emotional response to having less stability can lead to unintended risks.

Another important aspect is IP – intellectual property- theft. There’s often a resurgence of IP theft in times of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Unfortunately, it’s easier to get your moral guard down: employees give in more easily. And IP theft can be very damaging to companies.

7. If we have a look at the channels used by fraudsters, it’s definitely going the cyber way. The use of deepfakes and deep audios has increased by 118% since last year for example, and the use of BEC scams by 103%. Do you think there’s a renewal in these BEC scams – from old-school emails to highly convincing AI-generated texts -? And do you think these new channels are making it harder for companies to detect ongoing scams?

These numbers are interesting but much higher than I would have expected. I’ve seen these techniques in use of course, but didn’t realize they were already so successful.

The thing is, it’s much harder to spot these types of sophisticated scams. Our normal routines and controls don’t work anymore with such convincing schemes. As an actor in the payment space, I think we should all stop multitasking and doing things so quickly: our responsibility is to take the time to follow the right steps and processes.

There’s a lower barrier to entry now, when it comes to fraud, with these AI tools. You don’t need to be a specialized hacker or write really well: a tool is going to do it all for you. There are many easy ways criminals can infiltrate our companies – and lives for that matter.

8. In terms of the defenses that companies have in place, we can see that many companies have increased their budget for fraud prevention – which is a positive sign – but that manual prevention is still widely used. Top defenses used include double-check procedures, fraud awareness training, and segregation of duties. Only 26% of companies use fraud prevention software. What’s your opinion on these numbers? Isn’t it surprising that after all these years and with such high figures, companies still think they can wipe out fraud with manual processes? And what would your advice to corporates be?

To be blunt, what we’re doing is not good enough.

These numbers show us that after years of fraud, the same things keep on happening and that it’s only after huge financial or reputational breaches that companies realize they have to act and set up specific safeguards.

And organizations can’t fight technology fraud without technology. It just won’t cut it. We’re only human: we’ll miss things and make mistakes.

Of course, procedures like double checks are better than nothing – but they’re not good enough. The numbers won’t change course unless we keep up with technology and use the available tools to fight fraud.

We’re all getting weary of these fraud attempts. And it’s hard to be focused not only on your actual job but on training, on understanding all these events that are coming at us. It will definitely take a concerted effort and awareness from management to make sure we have the right budget, resources, and technology in place.

We need to take away the urgency and the multitasking: we need to take more time to make sure there are no loopholes.

9. In the survey, we can see an interesting figure about collaboration and fraud prevention. Only 9% of respondents believe that fraud prevention should be the concern of multiple teams. Most think it should just pertain to the finance team. What’s your take on this? Do you think collaboration can help fraud prevention?

Absolutely. Fraud is everybody’s problem. It is not just the payment team’s or the CEO team’s problem.

It is everybody’s responsibility in the company to understand how they can help with fraud detection and prevention efforts.

It can’t just be left up to the payments team because there are multiple steps up to when a payment goes out of the company where things can go wrong and fraud can be perpetrated. All these steps are susceptible to being targeted by fraudsters.

Everyone needs to be aware of the risks and there needs to be top-down instructions and approaches on how to handle these risks. If your C-levels aren’t invested in fraud prevention, of course, fraud will keep on increasing.

We need the right training, we need the right resources, and we need the right responsibility and accountability in our teams.

10. Do you have anything to add to these figures? What would your advice be for companies in 2025?

It’s our job to make our department fraud’s worst nightmare. We need to constantly educate and train people – on a large scale, not only finance teams – to let them know what’s coming at us and how to fight back. It’s a constantly evolving subject it’s only with automation and the right technology that we can take the lead.

And we’re all in this together: we’re all fighting for more resources and dealing with limited resources, but this really is an area we shouldn’t compromise on. We’ve seen the numbers: as a company, it’s almost guaranteed that we’ll face a fraud attempt or a successful fraud attempt. And as a treasurer responsible for money movements and payments, this makes me scared.

We need to understand that fraud has changed and that it isn’t the traditional old schemes, but new schemes that are harder to spot.

Let’s make 2025 the year that fraudsters fail and we don’t.

To conclude

To conclude Trustpair empowers finance leaders to combat fraud with automated bank account validation, seamless integrations, and robust security measures. Discover how we can help your organization protect its assets and build financial resilience – contact an expert today!

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