Fraud And The Small Business - You Should Be Worried
If you run or support a small business, you may think there is little potential for fraud, so there’s no need to worry about it. You probably think you have few assets to be taken, you know (and trust) the employees, and believe an overall handle on things is in place.
The reality is… you’re oh so wrong.
Let me start by getting your full attention to the matter with a look at fraud by the numbers, using the Association of Certified Fraud Examiner’s 2014 Report to the Nations:
5% – the typical loss of revenue due to fraud
29% – the percentage of fraud cases involving the small business
85% – the percentage of cases that involved misappropriation of assets
$154,000 – the median loss to the small business in fraud cases
So, even with all these stats, you are probably thinking this may just be a lot of FUD and really doesn’t apply to your case. Even if I tell you a small business is 1.45 times more likely to be the victim of fraud than an enterprise company with 10K employees? Your disbelief may partially be due to a distinct lack of anyone yelling “FRAUD!” But allow me to throw one more stat at those of you who don’t believe it’s happened at your business:
‘The average time to detection of fraud is 18 months‘
So, while you’re thinking it’s not happening, you really won’t know if that’s true, roughly, for another year and a half.
What makes the small business so susceptible to fraud?
Read the entire article at ControlNow.com here.
