Trustpair, Accenture and Option Finance unveil their Fraud Study 2021 conducted in collaboration with Spoking Polls! As the risk of money transfer fraud explodes, especially since the health crisis began, companies have no choice but to react and protect themselves from this relentless threat. Through this study, you will discover how companies are organizing themselves to fight against money transfer fraud in 2021.
The fight against fraud: a priority for CFOs in 2021
The evidence is clear: the fight against wire fraud is an important issue for 89% of CFOs in 2021. The results of the Fraud Survey reflect the market perception of Trustpair and Accenture, and can be explained by two key factors:
- the desire of being protected from the risks of fraud, which are exploding in times of crisis (36%)
- the project to start or continue the digital transformation of the company (27%)
« The fight against fraud is definetely a real concern for financial departments and corporate treasurers. It can be explained in particular by the dematerialization of payment methods, especially since the recent health crisis. » – Elodie Bananier – Senior Manager at Accenture – Head of Fraud and Financial Security, Know Your X and Market Integrity offerings
The fight against transfer fraud is a key issue for companies, and is fully in line with the missions of financial departments. In fact, in 88% of cases, the problem of fraud is dealt with by the Finance Department, the Treasury Department or the Accounting Department.
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Ineffective control systems?
With these issues in mind, Finance Departments are getting organized and implementing control and awareness actions on an almost daily basis. Thus, 2/3 of companies have set up a team awareness program, and the control of RIBs is becoming a systematic practice:
- when updating a third party (82%)
- at the beginning of the business relationship (75%)
- when auditing the third-party database (48%)
? But in view of the measures in place, one question persists: are these controls really effective?
The study reveals that in parallel, 79% of companies include the fight against fraud in a digital transformation project. However, their existing systems are manual, time-consuming and above all fallible… They do not represent a sufficient protection against fraud! Also, the rate of digital equipment is at the margin, with only 16% of companies using a technological solution to combat transfer fraud.
« Today, companies are being defrauded because they do not control their supplier data. They’re not in control of their data because they’re running manual processes. With the digitization of this task, teams provide more security and streamline processes. » – Baptiste Collot – President of Trustpair
Digitization: Finance departments are lagging behind
While the low rate of equipment in Finance Departments may be surprising, it can be explained above all by the emergence of a new market, given that the context illustrates an equipment market and not a replacement market. A certain amount of evangelization work needs to be done with companies to democratize these solutions.
« There is a strong need to reassure and educate the market. If the first companies to have equipped themselves against fraud were innovative, the market is evolving towards a more global dynamic and is reaching a stage of maturity that it did not have before. » – Baptiste Collot – President of Trustpair
Companies are concerned about the transfer fraud issues that threaten them, and know what they need to do to protect themselves from these risks. But between theory and practice, barriers and reticence remain, slowing down companies in their path towards high security of their processes and data. Indeed, 14% of respondents intend to invest more in digitalization projects in 2021 to combat credit transfer fraud.
Moving from an awareness program and initial security measures to digitization of processes will be the next challenge for finance departments.
« Today, companies are aware that they need to take action, implement controls, and that these actions are part of a project to accelerate digitalization. There is a lot of work to be done to make these solutions known, make them credible and feed the market with feedback. » – Elodie Bananier – Senior Manager at Accenture
Want to know more about the results? Download the Fraud 2021 Trustpair study!
Discover the results live in our webinar:
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About the Fraud 2021 Survey : The survey was conducted from December 7, 2020 to January 22, 2021 among 165 CFOs and Treasury Directors of French SMEs and large groups. The survey was carried out by administering a questionnaire via the Internet and by telephone through the Spoking Polls platform.
