How much is fraud costing you, it could be more than you think!

I have been looking at fraud this week, trying to work out how much it costs each person and the figures shocked me. Thinking about it I should have been more realistic in my expectations but even so the figure was surprising.

Fraud is estimated to cost the UK economy between £13bn and £20bn every year! This equates to a cost of £330 for every person in the country, every man, woman and child which is paid for through higher charges for goods and services and through higher taxes. The cost of every act of fraud is passed onto the end consumer to pay for it.

On average 6% of an organisation’s annual revenue is lost to fraud and 58% of these fraudulent activities are committed due to inadequate controls within the business.
So thinking about it, because a business doesn’t take their security seriously enough, it costs you and me, on average, £330 per year, each!

I don’t think this is fair. OK there will be crimes that are difficult to stop, but it would be nice for them to make a bit more of an effort. It is well-known by industry that most frauds that are carried out in the UK are done so by well educated, married men between the ages of 35 and 44.

Whilst I appreciate you can’t prevent everything, implementing tighter controls would mean that the level of fraud would come down and the net benefit would be that we would get cheaper goods and services. The knock on effect would also be that individuals would see fewer cases of identity theft so less angst in having to resolve it.

I would guarantee you that if you call a business and ask them if they have adequate security in place they will say they have but the reality is always way short of the mark.