A recent study conducted by LexisNexis revealed that charlatans choose no favourites—almost all industries have been affected by one form of fraud or another.
The study surveyed 800 fraud mitigation professionals to paint a clearer picture of how widespread fraudulent behaviour is, and found that the insurance, financial services, retail, health care and communications industries, as well as a number of government entities, were the most affected by what the study called “cross-industry fraud”.
Cross-industry fraud was a particular concern outlined by the report. Eighty-four (84%) of the professionals surveyed said that several of the fraud cases they examined were tied to another industry, especially those investigating insurance fraud. On the other hand, those who investigated government or health care industry fraud cases were less likely to find overlap with another industry.
According to the report, a good portion of mitigation professionals in the insurance (68%) and financial services (64%) industries believe that sharing fraud data within those industries would be helpful in pre-empting schemes. Other professionals answered that sharing information outside of their own industry could be beneficial 42% of the time, and moderately valuable 33% of the time.
Eighty-nine (89%) of the mitigation professionals surveyed agreed that developing universal fraud descriptors would be very useful, especially for those in the insurance industry (63%) and financial services (61%).
Additionally, 81% of the respondents said that they would consider contributing their fraud outcomes to a shared, universal database if it meant that they would be able to find and use fraud information from contributors in other industries.
Notably, the study also revealed that each industry focused on different fraud-related concerns.
For the financial services (61%) and retail (52%) industries, identity theft was their biggest concern. Claims fraud was identified as the larger issue for the insurance (60%) and health care (45%) industries. For the communications industry, hacking (61%) was the source of most of its headaches. The government’s major issues mostly involved fraud related to employees (52%).
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