Britain Losing Billions Through Fraud – 1 October 2013

According to a recent survey, the UK is losing billions of pounds to fraud every year and since the start of the recession the level of fraud has risen by 20 per cent. The survey, which studied fraud data from around the world over the last 15 years, has estimated around £85 billion of the UK’s economic output is being lost as a result of fraud.

According to the research the main forms of business fraud involve procurement and payroll, such as goods or services not being supplied after payment or companies being overcharged. Between 1980 and1981, UK GDP shrank by 6.1 per cent and reported fraud and forgery rose by 9.1 per cent while between 1990 and 1991 it shrank by 2.5 per cent and reported fraud and forgery rose by 30.5 per cent. The only way to counteract business fraud is through being vigilant and the study estimates that if efforts to fight it were to be stepped up, the UK could cut its losses by around 40 per cent, or £34bn, within a year.

A good way for individual business owners to do this would be to get a forensic accountant to go over the books and look for anomalies, which is all part of their training.

A good firm of forensic accountants will use the industry’s most sophisticated forensic techniques, using specialised software to comb through large amounts of data to detect anomalies and spot questionable trends.

Author: Roger Isaacs, 1 October 2013

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