Nearly two thirds of UK small to medium-sized businesses are concerned about the risk of fraud in their businesses, according to research conducted by Morley and Scott Accounting, one of the UK's leading Chartered Accountancy practices.
Over a third of the companies surveyed believed that the risk of fraud in their business was high, with the potential risk areas ranking highest amongst staff (45%), purchases (19%), sales (13%) and financial reporting (10%). In fact, alarmingly, almost half of those surveyed (46%) admitted to having only a few honest employees!
The biggest concern facing UK businesses in this economic climate is the risk of fraud, which is not surprising, given that fraud is costing the UK economy between £13-16 billion pounds a year. With an increasingly IT literate workforce and the advent of sophisticated desktop publishing software, it is even easier to produce dummy documents and falsify records.
Whilst two thirds of respondents said that there were checks in place throughout the organisation to identify fraud, over a third put the responsibility of identifying fraud at the financial director's door, while a quarter cited the Board of Directors and 16% felt it was the managing director's job.