The Fraud Assessment Checklist
Fraud assessments are special tests designed to discover your business’s current fraud risks. Vulnerabilities of all types must be carefully analyzed and, ultimately, addressed for a complete fraud assessment to work as intended. That’s why it’s important for both internal and external risks to be considered.
Professionals in this sphere not only help in identifying existing risks to your organization but also assist in crafting an effective roadmap for responding to such risks, however, if you aim to tackle a fraud assessment on your own, the following checklist is a great start:
1. Identify Your Threats
When you create your fraud risk assessment, you should have a good idea of the most applicable risks for your business as some will be more threatening than others. This should allow you to conserve resources by focusing only on relevant areas.
The Journal of Accountancy identifies four distinct forms of fraud exposure:
- Chargeback Fraud – This happens when a customer purchases an item online using a credit card and requests a chargeback from their card-issuing bank after receiving the product or services. Once approved, the bank will cancel the transaction, giving the fraudster a complete refund, leaving the merchant financially responsible for the losses.
- Fake Returns – This is also known as friendly fraud where a criminal will either have or find a receipt, grab a new item off the shelf, and go up to the register for a return.
- Fake Accounts – Using a stolen or falsified identity to open up a store credit card and account.
- Account Takeover – When a cybercriminal gains access to personal information and is able to access an account.
2. Quantify and Assess the Risks
With potential fraud risks both internal and external to your company defined, your next order of business should be to determine just how much these threats could cost you.
Financial Loss – Fraud unfortunately continues to grow. With fraud losses continuing to grow by $20 billion in the last year globally, corporations need to be aware of how detrimental their losses can be without a strong verification system in place.
Customer Loyalty – Customers don’t just want a great experience, they expect it. So if you have tools in place that are flagging people who don’t need to be flagged, or if their information is stolen and they suffer a financial loss, they will eagerly jump to the competition for a better experience.
Reputation Damage Control – Let’s face it, news travels fast. Which is why it’s important that you cover all your bases, so that you keep your brand in a positive light by having systems in place that catch fraud before it can happen.
To determine the level of which your business would be impacted (both directly and indirectly), consider utilizing a probability matrix. A probability matrix is a grid system that maps out the probability of your business being affected by a specific type of fraud and the impact it would have if that happened.
3. Utilize Preventative Measures
Ideally, mitigating fraud risk means preventing it from happening rather than problem solving once it has occurred. One of the easiest fraud prevention strategies to implement is that of terminating risky behavior. All processes that pose significant risk while offering very little reward to your business should be stopped or transferred to a secure third party. Those that pose no major immediate threat to your organization’s livelihood may be tolerated for some time, though they should ultimately be addressed when the opportunity arises.
Implement Valid Identity Solutions
ID authentication software can help curb and eliminate fraudulent activity such as vendor fraud, identity theft, and unauthorized access schemes. Companies, like Intellicheck, provide ID authentication solutions with 99% accuracy and simple implementation. Ultimately, deployment of this software allows businesses to proactively fight fraud rather than mitigate issues once fraud has already occurred.
4. Conduct Ongoing Monitoring
Detailed cost-benefit analysis should be performed on the results derived from the assessment and continuously tracked. Getting your team involved in this process can be helpful for finding ways to improve and to make proposed changes stick. With that said, it’s important to hold team members accountable for unacceptable risk levels.
It may prove beneficial to designate a key team member or a small group as “owner” of anti-fraud initiatives such as these. This channels efforts in a single direction and prevents confusion from subverting your team’s intentions along the way.
How to Choose the Right Partner
When dealing with fraud, identity verification always needs to be a priority. Intellicheck can verify an ID with 99.9% accuracy versus the industry average of 60% or less. Intellicheck’s high accuracy means that you can start out a relationship knowing that you can trust the person you are working with.
Our services include a variety of solutions that you can turn on and easily integrate into your current system immediately. We are trusted by 4,500 bank branches, over 30,0000 retailers and 54 Law Enforcement agencies across the US. Contact us to see how we can help you.
