The Benefits of Taking the ACFE Fraud Prevention Check-Up

Since fraud can be a catastrophic risk, taking the ACFE Fraud Prevention Check-Up can save your company or other entity from disaster. If you do not proactively identify and manage your fraud risks, they could put you out of business almost overnight. Even if you survive a major fraud, it can damage your reputation so badly that you can no longer succeed independently.

The ACFE Fraud Prevention Check-Up can pinpoint opportunities to save you a lot of money. Fraud is an expensive drain on an entity's financial resources. In today's globally competitive environment, no one can afford to throw away the 6% of revenues that represents the largely hidden cost of fraud. Those businesses that have identified their most significant fraud costs (such as insurance and credit card companies) have made great strides in attacking and reducing those costs. If an intity is not identifying and tackling its fraud costs, it is vulnerable to competitors who lower their costs by doing so.

Fraud is a common risk that should not be ignored. The incidence of fraud is now so common that its occurence is no longer remarkable, only its scale. Any entity that fails to protect itself appropriately from fraud should expect to become a victim of fraud, or rather, should expect to discover that it is a victim of fraud.

It is the least expensive way to find out the entity's vulnerability to fraud. Most entities score very poorly in initial fraud prevention checkups because they don't have appropriate anti-fraud controls in place. By finding this our early, they have a chance to fix the problem before becoming a victim of a major fraud. It's like finding out you have a seriously high blood pressure. It may be bad news, but not finding out can be a lot worse.

It is a great opportunity for an entity to establish a relationship with a Ceritfied Fraud Examiner whom they can call on when fraud questions arise. Since the risk of fraud can be reduced but is rarely eliminated, it is likely that the entity will experience fraud in the future and will need a CFE's assistance.

Strong fraud prevention processes could help increase the confidence investors, regulators, audit committee members and the general public have in the integrity of the entity's financial reports. They could help to attract and retain capital.